value orientations in citizens’ social participation in mashhad

one of main goals of urban officials is encouraging and promoting social participation among citizens. this is so, because both reduce costs and can be a base for self-fulfillment and empowerment among citizens. but, like other actions, measuring participative actions has some difficulties. the main difficulty is about measuring that part of social action which occurs in actor’s mind. this part of action, in this paper is conceptualized by participative orientations. participative orientations are measured, and based on that, actors are assigned to different categories. to measure participative orientations, two hypothetical situations are defined for respondents. then they were asked to decide between two choices in these situations: giving admonition to people to who blemish public buses, and separating garbage at home. using parsonian pattern variables, for each of these two, five questions were designed, which had a dichotomous answer. the answers were analyzed and grouped to reach different combinations of social participation. gradually four types of social participation were differentiated: affective-instrumental participation (44.1%), instrumental-value related participation (10.6%), value related participation (25.6%), instrumental participation (19.7%). this research shows that the main character of participation among residents is instrumentality. this would be a base for planning for encouraging people for social participation according to their orientations.