Identifying and Ranking the Effective Factors in Attracting and Developing Public Participation in Iranian Public Libraries: Library Donors' Perspective

This study investigated the factors contributing to the attraction and development of public participation in public libraries from the donors' perspective in the library building. In terms of the research objectives, the present study is exploratory research that was carried out using a mixed research method, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. In the qualitative part of the research, 15 active donors were interviewed using the targeted and snowball sampling technique. The research population in the quantitative part consisted of active donors of public libraries in Iran, and a questionnaire was distributed and collected among 246 of them. Inferential tests, including the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis were used for data analysis. Besides, spss22 and pls3.8 software were run for data analysis. Given the research findings, cultural, economic, social, and structural factors were identified as effective in attracting public participation. The results obtained from the confirmatory factor analysis showed that among the factors affecting the attraction of public participation in public libraries from the donors' point of view, cultural factors with an impact factor of 0.868 had the highest impact, followed by economic factors with an impact factor of 0.845, respectively. Furthermore, social factors with an impact factor of 0.824 and structural factors with an impact factor of 0.628 were in the third and fourth priorities, respectively. Given the severe challenges of the financial resources of Iran's public libraries, it is quintessential to identify ways to attract more public and donors' participation, to provide opportunities for participation in public libraries, and to promote this idea among other people. Utilizing donors' experiences in identifying the factors contributing to the attraction of public participation in public libraries can provide a suitable planning environment for the development of public participation in public libraries.