Assessing the Social Capital Indicators Affecting Tourist Satisfaction (Case Study: Masuleh Town)

Extended Abstract
The present study seeks to examine role of social capital in satisfaction of tourists. To achieve this objective, the concept of social capital based on three indicators has been evaluated: perceptions, structural and communicative. So that the effects of each of the listed indicators on tourists satisfaction index (physical-spatial, functional-structural and content) were evaluated. The research method is descriptive and analytical type. 384 questionnaires were completed among tourists in the town of Masoule. To evaluate the satisfaction level of tourists, canonical correlation and Friedman test method is used. The results indicate that in the dimensions of social capital, cognitive component has the best performance from the tourists. Content components are allocated to the greatest satisfaction of tourists (including social and cultural issues of the Masoule people). After evaluating each element of concepts of social capital and satisfaction of tourists, Most effectiveness of each one of the components of social capital(perceptions, structural and communicative) as an independent variable on tourists' satisfaction(Physical-spatial, functional-structural, content, socio-cultural) was evaluated. It is observed that although the cognitive component of social capital has a significant impact on tourist’s satisfaction but it has not a significant impact on the physical-spatial factors.  In other words, the cognitive component has significant impact on structural- functional aspects and content components (socio-cultural) and communicative- structural components have also significant impact on satisfaction. But the most impressive according to the percentage of variance explained by the effect of cognitive component of social capital on the content component (social-cultural) is satisfaction.
 
Introduction
Social capital, unlike other investors is not physically present, but it's the result of the interaction and social norms. On the other hand, its increasing can cause serious lowering of the costs level of running society and operating costs of organizations. Social capital is not a set of institutions that are the social underlying institutions, but a loop that connects people to each other in the form of organizations, networks and volunteer organizations. The present study sought to evaluate the role of social capital indicators on the satisfaction of tourists. In order achieve this goal; we have examined the concept of social capital based on three cognitive, structural and communication indices. So the effects of each of these indices on tourists satisfaction indices (physical-spatial, structural-functional and content based (socio - cultural) can be measured.
 
Materials and Methods
This study is applied in terms of objective, and its approach is descriptive-analytic, with a sample size of 384 patients that was performed on tourists in the historic town of Masuleh. The data collection tool in this study include: library studies to collect information about research literature and reveal the social capital concept and satisfaction of tourist and filed studies which were used in this section, to obtain the relation between the variables, the questionnaire was used. The reliability of which was obtained using Cronbach's alpha of 0.712. The independent variables included all aspects of social capital and the dependent variable is the satisfaction of tourists. The tools to analyze the data are descriptive statistics including frequency, mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics including Friedman test and canonical correlation. This is done in the form of SPSS software. The concepts of this research are social capital and satisfaction of tourism.
 
Discussion and results
In response to the first question, cognitive dimension with an average of 25/3 and communication dimension with an average of 17.3 and structural dimension with an average of 72.2 were optimized, but to ensure about the conclusion, regarding answers to the survey questions, we used Friedman test with the participation of 384 tourist and confidence coefficient of 95%, Friedman test results show that Friedman test statistic with degree of freedom equal to 363/04 and significance level of 0.000, which is smaller than 5% error. In other words, the null hypothesis, based on the identity of the dimension performance has been rejected, and we conclude that the cognitive, social and communicative dimensions in terms of tourism don’t have identical performance and have significant differences in performance in the second question based on Friedman test, respectively, content dimension (social and cultural) with an average of 3/13 and functional-structural dimension with an average of 2/09 and physical-spatial with a n average of  1/2 have improved performance. But to ensure about conclusions, regarding answers to the survey question, we will use Friedman test with participation of 384 tourist and confidence coefficient of 95%. Friedman test results show that the Friedman test statistic with freedom degree of 2 is equal to 438/28 and significant level is 0.000, which is smaller than 5% error. In other words, the null hypothesis has been denied based on the identity of tourist satisfaction in these dimensions, so we conclude that tourist satisfaction based on content aspect (socio-cultural), physical-spatial and structural-functional dimensions was not identical and there is a significant difference in satisfaction of these dimensions. Since the aim of third question is to investigate the relation between a set of independent variables and the dependent variables, canonical correlation was used, although cognitive dimension of social capital has a significant impact on the satisfaction of tourists, but it had no significant effect on spatial and physical factors. Because the level of significance in this case is equal to 0.24, which is upper than 5% error, about other aspect, the significant level is lower than 5% error. In other words, the cognitive aspect has a significant impact on structural-functional and content (socio-cultural) aspects and also communication and also structural and communicational aspects have a significant impact on all aspect of satisfaction but the most minor impact with respect to the percentage of variance explained by the effect of cognitive dimension of social capital on the content (socio-cultural) is satisfaction.
Conclusions
In order to analyze the level of tourists' satisfaction, canonical correlation method and Friedman test have been used. The research results showed that cognitive dimension has the best performance from tourist's view as well as the most satisfaction of tourists, is allocated to content aspect (including social and cultural issues of Masuleh citizens). Based on canonical correlation, also among the independent variables according to the percentage of variance explained by effect of cognitive dimension of social capital on content (socio-cultural) aspect is satisfaction.
 
Keywords: Social Capital, Satisfaction of Tourists, Masuleh town.
 
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