Measuring Willingness to Participate and the Factors Affecting Citizen Participation (Case Study on Citizens in the 20th Municipal District of Tehran)

Participation is one of the issues emphasized by sociologists and urban management theorists. Sociologists emphasize participation, participatory strategies and bottom-up planning approach. This study aims to assess willingness to participate and the factors affecting citizen participation in the citizens living in the 20th municipal district of Tehran. To this end, a study was first conducted on the theoretical issues and empirical research on participation. Afterwards, a theoretical model was developed that focused on the independent variables of the research (e.g. neighborhood attachment, urban governance, etc.). The population of the study consisted of all Shahr Rey citizens above the age of 18. The sample size was calculated to include 400 citizens using Morgan’s Table. The participants were selected using cluster random sampling. The data were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire including 82 items. The reliability of the questionnaire was calculated to be 0.77 for an administration of 30 scales using Cronbach’s alpha formula. Correlation coefficient, linear regression, t test and one-way ANOVA were run to analyze the data. The results showed a significant difference between citizens’ willingness to participate and neighborhood attachment, urban governance, social trust, satisfaction and mass media. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s2p15