JOURNAL OF RURAL RESEARCH
Year:2019 | Volume:10 | Issue:2 |Papers Count:11

Every income-generating business set up at home and done by means of the tools and facilities at hand is referred to as a home-based business. The present research was conducted to determine the challenges of home-based businesses in the villages of Kermanshah Province. The research is based on the qualitative method of "Grounded Theory", judgment and snowball sampling procedure, and in-depth semistructured interviews with 19 activists in home-based businesses as well as experts from various fields of government, academia and the private sector. The validity of interviews was confirmed by triangulation and researcher’ s review methods. For the data analysis, a systematic approach and a three-step open, axial, and selective coding technique were used. The results of the study showed that the development of home-based businesses in the study area is faced with various challenges that can be categorized into causative, interfering and contextual types. The major consequences of these challenging conditions include demotivation of activists, creation of psychological barriers for newcomers, increase in ruralurban-migration, and reduction in business competitiveness.

The main purpose of this study was to analysis the impact of geographic labor market dichotomy on rural regions in Harsin County by using a qualitative research method. Content analysis was performed through a descriptive-analytical technique. The data were gathered by semi-structured interviews with 20 key participators that had transferred from a primary labor market to a secondary labor market. It was shown that; physical and psychological problems, reduction of individual freedom, welfare and financial problems, family problems, migration and going away from rural affairs, behavioral and social culture degradation, reduction of social communication, personal and domestic problems, financial problems, lack of saving, and security problems are the main challenges posed by the geographical dichotomy of the labor market in the county of Harsin. However, the geographical dichotomy of the labor market in the study area has positive economic, social, cultural and individual impacts too.

Social responsibility is a tool for discussing the obligations that a company must fulfil for its society. In this regard, the present study evaluates the social responsibility of entrepreneurship companies from economic, ethical, social, environmental, legal and humanitarian points of view. The research method is descriptive and analytical. The data were collected from 10 rural entrepreneurship companies in the villages of Kashmar, Bardaskan and Khalil Abad using library studies, the SPSS software and the Fuzzy Vikor model. The results of the research indicated strong correlations among the majority of the social responsibility indicators of the studied companies. Of the companies involved in the entrepreneurship, Armaghan cooperative company with Q = 1, and Negin Yaghoot Food Products Company with Q = 0/7 scored the lowest ranks, but Fakhr Tarshiz with Q = 0. 256 and the leading cultivating company of Saleh Kashmar with Q = 0. 078 obtained the highest ranks.

The main purpose of this study was to analyze the role of social capital to improve the resilience of rural households in drought conditions. The statistical population of this study included all of the headmen in small-scale farming households of the county of Divandarreh (N = 10099) in Kurdistan Province. Using Cochran's sampling formula, 184 people were selected as the sample, but, to increase the credibility of the findings, 200 people were selected. A questionnaire was distributed among them. Totally, 195 questionnaires were completed and analyzed. The sampling was done by the stratified random sampling method with proportional assignment. The main data collection tool of the research was a questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by a panel of experts. Its reliability was also confirmed by the Cronbach's alpha coefficient (α > 0. 7). The data analysis was done by the SPSS version 18 and the Lisre l8. 54 software programs. The results showed that the studied households are in a favorable situation in terms of social capital status, but they are not in a good condition in terms of resilience. The correlational analysis indicated positive and significant relationships between all the dimensions of the studied households’ social capital (i. e. social trust, participation and collective action, social cohesion and membership in groups) and their resilience. In addition, the results of structural equation modeling showed that the dimensions of social capital with the determining coefficient of 0. 81 (γ = 0. 90, t = 17. 81) had positive and significant effects on the resilience of the households.

Resilience is a positive approach to the issue of drought. In recent years, this term has been used mainly instead of vulnerability in natural disasters management studies. The present research aims at the status of farmers’ resilience in Roniz rural district, Estahban County, and the factors affecting it during years of drought. The study is an applied type conducted through a descriptive-analytical method. The required data were collected using library and field (questionnaire) procedures. The study sample consisted of 230 farmers selected through the Cochran method. The data were analyzed using one-sample t-test as well as regression and correlation coefficient analytic techniques. As the results showed, of the two parameters in focus, namely social capital and a set of economic factors, the latter has a greater effect on farmers’ resilience and, therefore, their survival against natural disasters particularly drought. The results also suggest that the more social capital, the more resilience can be expected against drought.

Natural hazards over time lead to the destruction of natural and human infrastructures in rural areas. The spatial analysis of hazards and their relation to the man-made environment can explain our perception of space in spatial relationships. This research first seeks to discover the natural hazards in the study area and then identify the villages that are unstable in the face of natural disasters. The study was carried out in two steps. First, a database was created of the most important environmental hazards (i. e. drought, earthquake, frost, dust, salinity and water hardness) in the GIS environment. Through the fuzzy weighing method, the final map of the hazards in the area was plotted, its hot and cold spots were identified, and the risk patterns were detected. Then, the population base of 540 villages in the region was analyzed for six census periods (1977-1987-1997-2007-2012-2017). This was done by collecting data on the severity, frequency of hazards and the level of rural resilience. The data collection tool was a specific questionnaire on the environmental hazards of the region. The results show that 250 villages have a zero or negative population growth. The southern and northern regions are severely vulnerable. Also, through a combination of the hazard sets, 47% of the area was found to be in a high-risk zone, which includes 67 villages.

Paying attention to social capital in the management of environmental resources by people and participation in various development programs are the important elements of rural management and development. These elements can solve socioeconomic problems and optimally distribute services and facilities to increase welfare and comfort. However, the importance of social capital and participation of villagers is not properly recognized. In this regard, the role of the people and their participation in accelerating development processes is not taken into consideration. This research aims at the relationship between the improvement of the social capital of villagers and their participation in sustainable rural development on one hand and the environmental, physical, economic and cultural mediating roles of villagers perceived through the implementation of programs and plans in Tehran Province. The study is of a descriptivesurvey type conducted with a questionnaire as the data collection tool. The research sample consisted of 400 households in 33 villages. The results indicated the positive effect of social capital on villagers’ participation in rural development programs. In other words, through the improvement of social awareness, social trust and social networks in connection to the implementation of community-based programs and projects by local managers, it is possible to enhance the participation of villagers in projects, social activities, and investment in rural areas. This, in turn, leads to improved sustainable development of villages.

Land use intensification refers to the increase of land productivity and yield through human activities. Despite the potential challenge of unsustainability, land use intensification is the main approach of developing agriculture and meeting the increasing food demand. It also serves as a measure for the evaluation of agricultural efficiency. This study is an attempt to evaluate and analyze the intensification of legume cultivation in Khorramdasht rural areas of Khomain County. The statistical sample of the study consisted of 183 stakeholders, and the data were gathered primarily via field work with a question-naire whose validity was confirmed formally and its reliability was statistically assessed with a pretest. Land use intensity, as the main variable, was quantitatively operationalized and measured based on a normalized weighted linear combination of the components, specialized cropping, proportioned mean farm area, productivity level, machinery coefficient and fallow period intensity. The relative weights were calculated through factor analysis followed by the normalization of the first component’ s factor loadings. Despite the large area under legume cultivation, the results revealed that nearly 98 percent of the farms are intensified below the average level while only 2. 2 percent are above it. The increment of land-use intensity is technically easier to achieve in systems that are currently at a low intensifica-tion levels, but low land-use intensities do not necessarily imply strong development and yield in-crease in the future. In this regard, the process of land use intensification has led to a marked diver-gence of the economic performance in the study area. At the same time, poor agricultural policies and management practices call for more attention and deliberate planning procedures in the future.

We have investigated the drivers of agricultural land use change to villa gardens in South Baraan and Kararaj rural districts in Isfahan County. Questionnaires were distributed among 184 farmers randomly selected from 426 in five selected villages. As the results showed, among spatial (i. e. environmental, economic, and social) drivers, environmental drivers (including dehydration) had the greatest impact. Social drivers, including the prevalence of constructing second homes and increasing demand in the land market, and economic drivers, including high agricultural inputs, were in the next ranks. The study of managerial drivers suggested that the interference of government in the agricultural market was a major driver in land use change. The same questionnaire was taken by 30 different land use experts selected by the snowball method. The results showed that, among locational-spatial drivers, social drivers had the greatest and economic drivers had the least impact on land use change. Also, among social drivers, the most effective factor was the purchase of land and construction of second homes. Among environmental drivers, the most effective factor was the cut-off of the Zayandehrud River. Of economic drivers, the most effective one was the higher income of tourism land use. Finally, the most effective management drivers were the poor monitoring, administrative corruption, and the ploy of some employees in government institutions. In the examined conditions, the farmers had little tendency to continue farming activities. This was strengthened by the shift of land use to more productive and less cumbersome activities.

This study aims to analyze the thermal properties of the external walls in the traditional indigenous buildings located in the foothills of Mazandaran Province. The buildings were selected through a simple random sampling method in the study area. Then, a sample of 30 external walls in those traditional dwellings was chosen. They were 60 to 80 years old with an area of 40 to 60 square meters each. The thermo-physical properties of the materials used in the walls were extracted from the Environmental Design Standard (CIBSE) and the Road, Housing and Development Research Center. Then, the octal thermal properties of the walls were calculated using a program that the authors designed by the EXCEL software. Also, based on their octal thermal properties, the walls were all compared in column charts. Eventually, according to the priority and significance of each thermal property, the comparison of the walls was done based on the least and the most energy loss. As the comparative analysis carried out in this study revealed, mud-brick walls have the highest efficiency in terms of Volumetric Specific Heat, Decrement Factor and Time Lag Associated with Decrement Factor. There is a moderate efficiency in other cases, and, in comparison with other external walls, mud-brick walls generally seem to be the most appropriate type of external wall in terms of the criteria in this research. According to the assertions of the permanent dwellers of the traditional indigenous buildings and their rate of satisfaction with the thermal comfort in those places under current climate conditions, mud-brick walls or any other wall with similar thermal properties can be the most appropriate type of external wall in the research area.

This study adopts a pathological approach to aim at tourism research in the Rural Research Quarterly. It is a qualitative study in terms of nature and an applied one in terms of purpose. The research was conducted through the content analysis of 38 articles in the Quarterly Journal of Rural Studies. Initially, previous studies were reviewed and an integrated model was developed to determine the content analysis indicators. Then, the selected sample of articles written in the field of tourism was evaluated. The macro dimensions of the model in content analysis included identity, structure, function and citation. The validity and the reliability of the study were confirmed based on the validity of the check list and reliability of the editors. Two different software packages, iMindMap9 and SPSS25, were used in the analysis process. The causes of deviation and the challenges of tourism research were identified, and the results were reported according to the dimensions of the content analysis model. Finally, certain solutions were proposed on the basis of the findings.