The Role of Social Capital in Satisfaction with Government Performance in COVID–19 Control Policy-Making in Tehran in 2020

As one of the substantial factors influencing the persuasion of social structure during great crises, social capital plays a vital role in accelerating the implementation and effectiveness of policies adopted to control crisis. In this respect, this study aimed to examine the role of social capital in the level of satisfaction with government performance in COVID–19 control policy-making. The statistical population of the study comprised all citizens of Tehran. The Cochrane formula was used to determine the sample size, which amounted to 400. The study relied on multistage cluster sampling to choose the participants in 22 districts of Tehran in Iran. Having been collected by a researcher-made questionnaire, the data was processed through SPSS software with one-sample t-tests, Pearson Correlation, multivariate linear regression, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The findings indicate that citizens living in Tehran have a moderate level of satisfaction with government performance in controlling COVID–19. Moreover, the lowest satisfaction mean value was associated with supply chain management and access to health items while the highest mean value of satisfaction pertained to the constraints and social distancing. There was a high correlation between the variable of social capital and satisfaction with government performance in COVID–19 control (R=0.552), and it can predict 30.3% of satisfaction variances. The results show that the variable of trust was the most important predictor of satisfaction with government performance in  COVID–19 control.