Sociological Explanation of Meta-Behavioral Political Apathy using Economic Determinants

The increasing trend of political apathy has challenged the political systems of the contemporary world so much that they have to seriously analyze the conditions that created it. In this regard, this research tried to answer two questions using quantitative method and survey technique: 1) What is the level of meta-behavioral political apathy (feeling powerlessness, sense of meaninglessness, feeling abnormality, feeling isolation, and feeling alienation) of the studied youth?; 2) To what extent have the economic determinants (decrease of incomes, increase of inflation, and lack of benefit from participation) influenced the meta-behavioral political apathy? The statistical population included 431,288 young people aged 18 to 29 living in the city of Kermanshah in 2022. Using the Cochran formula and cluster sampling method, the data were collected through the distribution of 400 researcher-made questionnaires with a validity of 0.88 and reliability of 0.80. Structural equation model and AMOS software were used to test the effect of economic determinants on the increase of meta-behavioral political apathy in the form of an experimental model. The findings showed that the meta-behavioral political apathy rate of the studied youth is 71.16 percent. Moreover, the results pertaining to the second research question showed that the decrease in income with a factorial effect of 0.80, an increase in inflation with a factorial effect of 0.88, and the lack of benefit from participation with a factorial effect of 0.71 had a significant impact on the increase of meta-behavioral political apathy explained a total of 62% of the increase. In addition, the structural model, while supporting the research hypothesis, showed that economic determinants have a correlation with a 0.79 factorial effect on meta-behavioral political apathy