بررسي عوامل موثر بر اعتماد اجتماعي به نيروهاي انتظامي (مطالعه موردي: استان مازندران)

A Study about the Factors Affecting Peopleʹs Trust to Police (case study: Mazandaran province)

The characteristics of modern society have produced new functions for trust. Given the existing concerns for maintaing social order and control in modern society, peopleʹs trust to police has gained a high significance and importance. Two general perspectives exist to explain the formation of trust. According to society-centered approach, trust expands as peopleʹs participation in formal and informal netwoks increases. In contrast, institution-centerd approach argues that the institutions that are central for the creating and maintaining trust are the policy-implementing institutions, that is, public service systems. The present paper seeks to compare these two perspectives with regard to peopleʹs trust to police. In doing so, it employed survey method with 7949 respondents from rural and urban areas in Mazandaran province. The multi-satge clustered sampling method was used. The findings showed that for the explanation of peopleʹs trust to police, social factors, in particular, the quality of government is more effective than the background variables and even participation in voluntary associations. Thus it can be argued that peopleʹs attitudes towards government agents and the performance of public organizations have a strong influence on their evaluation of police trustworthy.