Factors That Affecting Rural Women Satisfaction and Loyality Regarding Micro Credit Funds in Marvdasht and Ramhormoz Districts

Barriers of women’s participation could result from the prevailing social, economic and political systems. One instrument to economic equity is micro credit funds. Micro credit funds all over the world rely on feedback from women as their clients. Evaluation of micro credit funds clients’ satisfaction is essential for both internal and external reasons. In light of these facts, the aim of this paper is to measure women’ satisfaction with micro credit funds in Iran. The population of interest consisted of women who participate in the two micro credit funds in Fars and Khuzestan Province of Iran. Our study sample consisted of 800 Women who were selected through a simple random quota sampling method (n=200) based on a list of names from the Funds. The face validity of the questionnaire was approved by a panel of experts. Additionally, Cronbach alpha reliability coefficients shows, all scales indicated good-to-excellent reliability, generally 0.7 to 0.9. The t-test analysis revealed that Participants in Fars and Khuzestan significantly differ from each other regarding their loyalty to funds. The mean score of Fars participants was higher than that of Khuzestan participants. The regression analysis revealed that expectation from funds and perceived quality explained 27% of the variance in participant perceived value. While expectation, perceived value and perceived quality explained 67% of the variance in participant satisfaction. Finally, expectation, perceived value, perceived image and satisfaction explained 42% of the variance in participant loyalty regarding micro credit funds.