Survey of Attitudes among Forest Neighboring Rural Communities toward Forest Land Use Change A Case Study of Golestan Province

This survey was carried out to investigate the attitudes of rural communities living in the vicinity of forest areas toward forest land use change. For this purpose, 364 inhabitants in villages from eight counties in Golestan Province were surveyed. Using the survey method, a questionnaire was prepared and administered as the data gathering tool whose validity was confirmed based on expert judgment by university academics and experts working in the field of natural resources. Its reliability was evaluated against the Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Results revealed that the participants’ attitude toward and their readiness for changing forest land use were slightly above average. Moreover, no significant relations could be established between either age or education level and attitude toward land use change. Meanwhile, no differences were detected between sex and marital status with respect to the research question. This is while farmers and livestock growers showed the highest but civil servants showed the least positive attitude toward changing forest land use. Based on these results, a serious need is felt for improving the villagers’ attitude toward forest lands. In this regard, their knowledge of the economic, social, and environmental functions of forests needs to be elevated. Local NGOs and associations are recommended to be established in order to promote group activities in support of forests among villagers.