Rural Development Strategies
Year:2015 | Volume:2 | Issue:1|Papers Count:8

The increasing population and urban development in recent years has increased the demand for recreation in cultural and historic places. The tomb of Shams Tabrizi is located in Khoy, West Azerbaijan province due to its historical and cultural features being a, historic and touristic region of the province and the country. Therefore, due to the values of tourism and recreation, the existence of defieiencies in the historic site of the tomb can be effective in cultural tourism. This study is aimed at estimating the value of recreation in the tomb of Shams Tabrizi using contingent valuation. To investigate the factors affecting visitor’s willingness to pay, the logit model was estimated using maximum likelihood. The required data was obtained by usuing a questionnaire and interviews were collected on 140 visits to the tomb. The results showed that 75% of the visitors are willing to pay for visiting the tomb. The education variables, satisfaction, gender, household size, income and price have significant effects on the probability of willingness to pay, but they vary in age. The difference was not significant, but the sign was to be expected. The average willingness to pay was estimated to be the amount of 6250 Rials and the annual recreational value of the Shams Tabrizi's tomb was estimated to be about 375 million Rials.

One of the important inputs of the agricultural sector in Zabol which uses harvesting water from wells and has developed in recent years, is electricity input. Therefore, in this research using the ARDL model, electricity demand function in the agricultural sector in the area was estimated from 1985 to 2011 and effective factors were determined. The results show that in the long run, the price elasticity is negative and greater than one, income elasticity is positive and greater than one and also the percentage of users have a significant effect but temperature does not affect electricity consumption. Therefore, by eliminating subsidies and increase of energy sourcer prices, the income of farmers and their consumption will be reduced. In In the short run, all of the above variable changes affect the demand and each shock reaches an equilibirium after 4 billing periods.

Inappropriate use of production factors in order to enhance product performance during the last decade as a result of adverse environmental degradation and the need for sustainable production and food security shows the importance of the stability of the agricultural exploitation system. Accordingly, this study is aimed at eluciating the stability of operating systems of small scale peasants in the rural area of Boyer-Ahmad County. To determine the statistical sample size Kerjcie and Morgan sampling table was used. Sample size was estimated from tables of 33064 farmers living in the area and a sample size of 380 was calculated for each district according to simple random sampling. The data collection instrument was a questionnaire with closed and open-ended questions, which includes four parts. In order to assess the stability of the composite index in the three dimensions of economics, social and ecological use, the weight of each index was determined by the entropy method. The results indicated that the stability of the whole system of exploitation of small sacle peasant’s wisdom in rural areas of the central district of Boyer-Ahmad County is in semi-sustainable conditions. In consequence, the results showed that the unstable economic indices and the social and ecological conditions are sustainable. Therefore, the strengthening of the economics of small scale farmers can improve the sustainability of agriculture which should be considered as one of the main goals.

Several studies have showed the positive effects of locating industries in rural area to improve the socio-economic status and it is considered as a reason for rural and national development. The purpose of this study was to analyze study of agro processing industries effects on the status of life in the rural area in Bahar County. The research type was the applied descriptive. The target population consisted of households that live in the rural area of Bahar County. For the study of agro processing industries effects, ten villages (five villages that have agro processing units, and five villages that do not have agro processing units) were selected as the society of samples. The used sampling method was Multi-stage cluster sampling technique to consider household ratio in the villages and the number of samples was calculated by using the Cochran formula (N=3249, n=353). The research instruments were questionnaires whose validity was confirmed by a panel of faculty members. Reliability was measured by Cronbachs' alpha (a=0.899) and showed that the reliability of the questionnaire was acceptable. The results suggest that the agricultural industries in rural areas have a positive impact on the welfare facilities. The research findings showed that the agro processing industry led to significant differences in the quality of life between the two groups of villages, so that quality of life of the villages with agro processing industries was higher the others. The results showed that the establishment of industries in rural areas leads to agriculture boom and similar products by villagers causes their income to improve.

The general aim of the present study is investigating the effective factors on the Rural Islamic Councils’ Participation in Extension about Rural Sustainable Development in Sari. The sample size was determined using Cochran’s formula. Categorical random sampling was applied in this study and 235 members of the Islamic council were selected in Sari. The methodology for the study consisted of quantity- descriptive and inferential methods. Cronbach’s alpha and ordinal θ obtained 77 percent and 78 percent, respectively. The average age of the Islamic council members in Sari was 42 years and 39.33 percent of the council members had a certificate of educational studies leading to a degree. The average age of membership record in the council was 7 years and 91.6 percent of the council members reside in the village. Establishment of new agricultural crops planting and gardening, agricultural and garden crops insurance, mechanized plantation and using types of agricultural fertilization in the first to third rank showed the inclination of the Islamic council members for innovation. Step by step regression results showed that 42.9 percent of the related changes for participation were determined by innovations, communications, social affairs, educational needs and participation in training meetings.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the factors affecting the attitude of agricultural extension experts towards organic farming in the Kermanshah Township. Statistical population in this study consisted of all agriculture extension experts of the Jihade-Keshavarzi management and centres of agricultural services in the Kermanshah Township (N=148), 123 of whom were selected as research samples using random simple sampling method. The main instrument in this study was a questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by a panel of experts and its reliability was established by Cronbach's Alpha coefficient. The data was analyzed by using the SPSSWin20 software. The results showed that the attitude of the majority (57 percent) of agricultural extension experts towards organic farming in the Kermanshah Township was at the neutral level. The findings of mean comparison showed that there were significant differences between the attitudes of agricultural extension experts towards organic farming in the Kermanshah Township based on their field of study. In addition, the results of multiple regression analysis indicated that about 35 percent of the attitudes of agricultural extension experts towards organic farming is explained by the study of scientific research journal and using internet. The results of this study have applications for managers of the Jihad-e-Keshavarzi and centers of agricultural services in order to improve the attitudes of agricultural extension experts towards organic farming.

The main objective of this research is to survey the income distribution and the social welfare of rural households in the Alamut region of the Qazvin province. This research uses a descriptive analytical approach and the statistical society includes all rural households of the Alamut region. The required data are related to the years 2012-2013 during which questionnaires completed by 328 sample households were collected. The sample households were chosen using the stratified random sampling method and the Cochran formula was used for their selection. To determine the validity and reliability of the questionnaire the Cronbach's alpha method was used. In order to measure the inequality of income distribution the Gini Coefficient was used, and in order to measure social welfare level the Sen Index was used. In order to determine the insignificance of the inequality of income distribution the Kruskal–Wallis Test was used. Statistical analyses were performed using the SPSS software. The value obtained for the Gini coefficient for the Eastern Alamut Roudbar, Raj Dasht and the Western Alamut Roudbar were estimated to be 0.52, 0.44 and 0.39 respectively. The result showed that the income distribution of rural households in the Eastern Alamut region is more unstable than that of the other regions. The Kruskal-Wallis test result showed inequality of income distribution in the Alamut region. Moreover, the results show that the share of gardening activities income is the most important factor in the equality of income distribution in the Alamut region. The results using the Sen Index show that the rural households of the Western Alamut region have the highest level of social welfare. According to the obtained results, for a stable distribution of income and its transfer from the gardening sector to other sectors, more investment in education, coordinating and redistribution of activities of executive agencies, provision of better means for attracting touristd, offering the facilities to the younger generation to attract them to the agricultural sector and creating second jobs in the industry and services sectors for the farmers in the Alamut region are recommended.

Shadegan Wetland as one of wetlands of the international Ramsar convention, has unparalleled Agro biodiversity at its domain. In addition to agriculture and ranching, fishing, bird hunting, straw cutting and also harvesting forages from the wetland are possible benefits that are marginaly utilized. However, these exploitations will bring many threats to the life of wetland. Therefore, the necessity of NGOs participatory activities are tangible in the conservation and management of the wetland, and this would only be possible by understanding the attitude and knowledge levels of those involved. So, the present study was conducted with the aim of analyzing the attitude of rural households and identify the important factors about agro biodiversity at the domain of Shadegan Wetland using surveying method. The target population consisted of all rural households in the domain of Shadegan wetland (N=950). Sample were determined by using Morgan table and the Stratified proportional sampling, and 273 households were selected (n=273). The data collection tool was a questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by using a panel of experts in Ramin University. Also, the reliability of it was obtained by a pilot test and using SPSSv20 software. The reliability results obtained for items of knowledge and attitudes, were 0.87 and 0.83, respectively. The findings indicated that 49.1 percent of the people living in the rural areas had a relatively negative attitude towards agro biodiversity. Also the “knowledge” variable (with a coefficient of 0.548) was determined as the most variance of attitude.