Analyzing the Factors Influencing the Tendency of Villagers to Participate in the Initiative of Issuing Ownership Documents for Rural Lands (Case Study: Jahrom County)

IntroductionDetermination of ownership and issuance of title deed has a 75-year history in Iran. However, like many other aspects, the rural community lags behind the urban community in this regard. In recent years, due to the issuance of joint proofs of ownership for villages, most rural lands/buildings lack official ownership documents. Not only has this condition reduced the mental and emotional attachment of villagers to their birth place (due to the gap between urban and rural life), but it has also limited the facilities provided for villagers. Since this is a newly-appearing issue and it is going to be implemented for the first time in a large scale in the country, its consequences on the rural community should be carefully investigated.
Jahrom (a small city in Fars Province, Iran) is one of the regions in which the planned issuance of ownership documents has started from the early years of the 21st century. Therefore, in this study, the researchers attempt to investigate the factors which influence the tendency of villagers for obtaining rural ownership documents in this city. Accordingly, the main question of this research is:Q: What are the main factors influencing the tendency of villagers to participate in the initiative regarding the issuance of official ownership documents for rural lands/buildings?
H. It is hypothesized that consolidating ownership and using its advantages has a large effect on the tendency of villagers to implement this initiative.
The findings of this study will be analyzed using Factor Analysis.
Theoretical FrameworkAccording to classical economists, land as a whole is a valuable natural capability which is also considered as a way of gaining income. These economists maintain that land and capital are inseparable. It could be said that throughout the history of Iran, the issue of land and building ownership has greatly affected the rural community. However, with the issuance of official ownership documents for rural lands and buildings, it is expected that these disorders would reduce, at least with regard to the physical context of the village. Due to specific socioeconomic features of the rural community of Iran, newness of the policy and the multi-sectorial nature of its implementation, this policy has faced major challenges, the most important of which are as follow:• In the villages included in the land reformation plan, the documents of land reformation are common to all the villages and in most regions, the border between agricultural and residential lands has not been determined and there is not a given number for each piece of land. Therefore, the borders of the land and the possession share of each person from all the lands of the village are not specified. Also, the area which is possessed by an owner does not match with the share that has been determined in the land reform documents.
• In villages having subsidiary numbers which have been documented from the 1930’s onwards, most of the owners who are neither living in the village nor their heirs have constructed a building without any entails. Moreover, some owners have sold their properties through a hand-written document, without informing the registration authorities of the contract. Therefore, some lands are officially owned by the first owner, but the possessors are other individuals.
MethodologyThe current study is a functional research which is conducted through the descriptive-analytical research methodologies. The data for this research have been collected through field studies, questionnaire and library studies. Based on the population and housing census of 2012, Jahrom has four sections. Based on the data provided by the Housing Foundation of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the initiative for documenting the ownership of houses has been implemented in 48 villages of this city. However, in this study, 13 villages whose issued documents have been more than 300 volumes have been included in the sample. In order to estimate the size of the sample, the Kukran sampling method with the confidence level of 95% and the error rate of 6% was used. This formula determined 159 cases to be enough; however, in order to increase the certitude, more than 200 participants took part in the research through random sampling. After collecting the necessary data and analyzing the data in SPSS and ARCGIS software programs, the issue was further discussed and explained. In addition, in order to analyze the factors that influence the issuance of the ownership document of rural lands, exploratory factor analysis was used.
DiscussionIn this study, the effective factors on rural ownership documentation were studied using 28 primary items. Then, through the Varimax rotational technique, these items were reduced to five general factors. These five items account for 81.178% of the total variance. The share of each factor in determining the issuance of ownership documents has been estimated.
The results show that the first factor alone explains 37.629% of the total variance, followed by the second factor (21.279%), third factor (8.659%), fourth factor (7.986) and the fifth factor (5.625). The findings indicated that the main reason for tending towards attaining ownership documents for rural lands/buildings is to stabilize one’s ownership (70%). Warranty (25%) and applying for loans (5%) are other reasons for applying for ownership documents. It can be concluded that factors affecting villager's attitude towards the implementation of rural property ownership document issuance set is significantly different from the average.
ConclusionThis study attempted to investigate the effective factors on the tendency of villagers to participate in the initiative for issuance of rural ownership documents, with a focus on Jahrom, a small city in Iran.
Using an advanced statistical method (i.e., Factor Analysis), all the variables used in this study were categorized into more general factors. The factors influencing the tendency of villagers to participate in the rural ownership documentation program were investigated using 28 primary items. Then, through the Varimax rotational technique, these items were reduced to 5 factors which explain 81.178% of the total variance. The share of each factor in determining the issuance of ownership documents has also been estimated. Also, the results indicated that the first factor (increased investment) accounts for 37.629% of the total variance, followed by the second factor (21.279%), third factor (8.659%), fourth factor (7.986) and fifth factor (5.625).