The Effect of Economic Diversity on Rural Region's Sustainability (Case study: Shahrekord County Rural Area)

Recent century has witnessed a more growing interest in the concept of “sustainability”. The impetus for this interest arises from a number of factors including awareness of worsening social, economic, and environmental conditions and lack of ability on the part of the present economic and social systems in most developing countries to keep population especially in rural regions. As such, villagers, compared to city dwellers, have less income and receive fewer social services. So, they are considered as more vulnerable and poor. These factors lead to their emigration. The present study seeks to investigate the effect of economic diversity on rural regions’ sustainability in Shahrekord County, aiming at optimizing the future programs, contributing to better decision-makings and programming directed at sustainable development of rural regions as well as presenting suitable strategies and solutions to keep and enhance sustainability of rural regions.
In this study, required data was collected through survey-correlational method. 27 villages out of a total of 54 villages of Shahrekord County were selected from among 4 districts: Central, Laran, Ben, and Saman, at 3 geographical levels: mountainous-based, valley-based, and plain-based. Utilizing the Cochran formula, 382 families were selected as the sample, out of a total of 17032 rural families. Then the sample was determined based on the population of each village to the whole population. The stratified random sampling was used as the method to select and determine the required sample. After that, a questionnaire was designed and administered to the participants. The reliability estimate of the questionnaire using Cronbach’s alpha was .653. The content of the questionnaire was validated through convening a panel of university experts majoring geography and sociology.
The collected data was analyzed both descriptively and inferentially using SPSS software through pearson correlation analysis. The results showed that there was a significant relationship between economic diversity and rural regions’ sustainability (r=0.765, p