An Evaluation of the Impacts of Empowerment and the Moderating Role of Self-Efficacy on the Desire to Establish Sustainable Rural Businesses

Nowadays, the empowerment of rural people is an important development objective in any country. Accordingly, rural micro-credit fund plans have been introduced as an initiative to improve the quality of life for men and women in rural areas. Therefore, the present study is conducted to evaluate the efficacy of rural micro-credit funds as a financing initiative in improving the quality of life and empowerment of villagers in Ghale Ganj County, Kerman province during 2015-2018. It aims to evaluate the influence of empowering the members of rural micro-credit funds on their willingness to start up new businesses. The statistical population includes all villagers who are a member of the micro-credit funds. The sample size was estimated about 577 people based on using Cochran formula and through random and cluster sampling. The research instrument is a questionnaire, which its validity is confirmed by experts, and its reliability is estimated with coefficient alpha, 0.85, 0.92, and 0.91 for empowerment, self-efficacy, and starting businesses, respectively. These numbers are indicative of the high potential of instruments for data gathering. Data analysis is done through SPSS 25 and LISREL 8.8. Findings approve the goodness of fit of the structural model of the research. Besides, it is found that empowerment dimensions have a positive, direct, and significant impact on the inclination to start businesses. Furthermore, empowerment dimensions through the self-efficacy mediator variables have positive and significant effects.