فصلنامه روستا و توسعه
سال نوزدهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 76، زمستان 1395)

This study aimed at determining the values ​​of the host community and exploring new views about the development of tourism in Farahabad, Sari county of Iran, by value-focused thinking in order to identify decision opportunities, create and evaluate alternatives and finally, choose the best alternative. It was a qualitative research implemented through the strategy of Grounded Theory and also analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for evaluating and prioritizing the development alternatives in the studied area. The statistical population included 15 informed people in the concerned field who were selected by snowball sampling. The semi-structured interview was used to collect data. The study results showed that in accordance with value-focused thinking, the effective objectives in tourism development of Farahabad were divided into two types including fundamental and means objectives. Then, the phase of making decisions regarding these objectives began by specifying the alternatives and decision opportunities as well as evaluating them. Finally, the diversified development was selected as the most preferred alternative for community sustainable development in the studied area.

This research attempted to analyze the situation of rural settlements, take into account social justice in the allocation of services in rural areas of western provinces of Iran. As a practical descriptive and analytical research, it was conducted in MADM methods. The required information were collected from the secondary data (statistics of 2011) for Khuzestan, Kermanshah, Ilam, Kurdistan and West Azerbaijan provinces, where 31 indicators in various aspects of extraction were studied by using fuzzy VIKOR. The study findings described the atmosphere of regional inequality resulted from unfair distribution and allocation of resources, indicating the infiltration of enormous inequities within the provinces and their counties and deprived areas in terms of rural development, so that out of the 73 counties located in the studied area, only the rural areas of Sarvabad, Dehgolan, Takab, Kamyaran, Qorveh, Sanandaj, and Saghez counties were found highly developed in terms of facilities and resource allocations; and rural settlements of 31 counties were among the regions with mean development and those of 35 western counties were placed in the category of deprived areas in terms of development opportunities. The results showed that social justice was subject to equitable distribution and allocation of resources based on spatial justice; in addition, increased welfare and equal access to services needed a public move (to reduce inequalities) and the efforts of the authorities to reorganize strategies consistently and accommodate the rural settings.

Agriculture sector has an important portion of EU economy, with 3.8% of jobs and 4.4% of GDP. Negative rate of rural population growth is a risk for rural planners and shows the importance of new perspective for rural development in the EU. So, from the beginning of 21st century, there has been a new attitude towards rural and agricultural development in member states. Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), LEADER Approach and approved rural development programs for 2000-2006 and 2007-2013 periods are among the main rural development programs in this century. Coordination of rural development programs in national level with high level of policy making for development of rural regions in member states and conformity with the rules related to budget of any sections of program are the most important attitudes of new rural development landscape in the EU. In this article, we tried to survey the past and present rural development planning system in member states, its future perspective as well as effectiveness and importance of agricultural development programs in rural development process.

This study aimed at assessing solutions for improving occupational empowerment of rural female-headed households. Female-headed households in Shirvan (N=3287) formed the population of this descriptive- correlation study. The sample size was determined by using Cochran's formula (n=120), and two-stage cluster sampling method was used for selecting samples. The validity of the questionnaire was approved by a panel of academic experts. Pre-test and calculation of Cronbach's alpha coefficients were used to measure the reliability (0.75-0.87). The data were analyzed using SPSS 20. The results showed that the main cause of women to be head of households was the death of their husbands; there had been covered 44.20% of respondents by the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee (RA) and 5.80% by the General Directorate of Social Welfare, and 50% had not been covered by any of the funding agencies. Using factor analysis method, solutions for improving occupational empowerment of rural female-headed households were catagorized into four factors including: training-supportive, individual-psychological, housing, job training, warranty and support through institutions, and social and health insurance. These factors could explain 60.42% of the total variance of strategies to improve job empowerment of rural female-headed households.

This study aimed mainly at prioritizing rural municipalities (RMs) of the central district of Jiroft county in Kerman province of Iran according to the standards of sustainable rural development. First, the most important criteria were identified in a desk document method. Then, using the Delphi technique and the views of experts and subject specialists and village councils (25 individuals) in three stages, the most important criteria were primarily classified into five main issues and finally into the 42 sub-criteria. The alternatives to this research included the RMs of five villages of the concerned central district. Finally, fifteen experts in rural affairs were asked through focus group interviews with counsel to compare the pairwise test criteria and alternatives based on the criteria. Results revealed that among the criteria for measuring sustainable development, the greatest relative weight was of the construction and infrastructure critera with the value of 0.330 and the lowest relative weight was assigned to the criteria associated with communication with organizations and institutions with the value of 0.087. A number of the assigned sub-criteria to the sustainable development included improving the health services, encouraging the rural people to develop handicrafts and efforts to promote the development and marketing of rural products, making efforts to enhance social capital of the village, avoiding the pollution of water and soil in the village, and cooperating with the council and prefect for review and issuance of business licenses which were ranked first in each concerned criterion to determine the performance of the RMs.

The main objective of this study was to investigate mechanisms of rural tourism with emphasis on the natural tourism in the village of Heiderabad in Ilam county of Iran. It was an applied study in terms of the type and a quantitative research in nature while in terms of the method of data collection, it was considered as a survey. The population of this study consisted of three groups of experts, rural households, and tourists. For selecting the sample, in the the first group, the census method was used; and for the group of tourists, 100 people were selected in a convenience sampling method; as a whole, 250 people were studied. Main instrument of data gathering was a questionnaire, the validity of which was confirmed by a panel of experts in Ilam University, Islamic Azad University of Ilam Branch, and also experts in tourism. The results of exploratory factor analysis showed that in natural dimension, infrastructural-cultural mechanisms with %29.158 as well as welfare-services, informing and cultural-economic mechanisms were the most important mechanisms of rural tourism development.

This descriptive-survey study aimed at analyzing the quality of e-services delivered in rural ICT offices in Isfahan province of Iran. The statistical population included the households living in the villages equipped with these offices. The sample size estimated about 368, using Cochran formula. The data collection instrument was SERVQUAL questionnaire in which some changes were made for consistency with the area. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire were confirmed by Cronbach's alpha and KMO. Data was analyzed using SPSS. The results indicated that the clients had expected more than the status quo from the offices. However, among the five studied categories, the empathy and tangibility dimensions could relatively satisfy the expectations of the clients with the least negative reactions while credibility, accountability, and assurance dimensions were the least of all.