INFORMAL QARDH AL-HASAN AS COMMUNAL TRUST AND MORAL ECONOMY: Evidence from Iran
Abstract
Informal Qardh al-Hasan funds represent an empirically understudied form of Islamic social finance, particularly in marginalized communities where formal financial institutions are inaccessible or perceived as religiously incongruent. This study examines the motivational architecture underlying participation in interest-free lending networks in Saravan, a marginalized district in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province. Employing a sequential dual-method design, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted on survey data from 210 fund participants to identify six latent dimensions: communal trust and social capital; financial accessibility and incentive structures; institutional constraints and governance perceptions; collective solidarity and mutual support; religiosity and spiritual motivation; and personal embeddedness and local financial culture. Bayesian Network Analysis (BNA) subsequently modeled the probabilistic interdependencies among these dimensions. Findings indicate that institutional dissatisfaction and religious conviction jointly activate communal trust, which facilitates financial accessibility, collective solidarity, and local embeddedness. Religiosity does not operate primarily as a direct behavioral determinant; rather, it functions as moral infrastructure through which trust is generated and collective financial action sustained. By demonstrating how religious commitment interacts with institutional perceptions, social capital, and embeddedness, this study extends Institutional, Social Capital, and Embeddedness theories and offers policy implications for culturally and religiously responsive financial inclusion in marginalized communities.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30821/miqot.v50i2.1754
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