Analysis of Factors Affecting Population Unsustainability in Rural Settlements: A Case Study of Kurdistan Province of Iran

Studying the rural population developments in Kurdistan province of Iran in the last six decades shows that the villages of this province have always been in a downward trend. Accordingly, the present study aimed at determining the most important factors affecting this phenomenon in the studied villages. It was a descriptive-analytical research with a survey approach. For this purpose, the population growth rate was firstly calculated over three decades from 1986 to 2016; and the studied counties were categorized into three classes (unsustainable, relatively sustainable, and sustainable); then, there were selected a total of 23 villages as sample villages and also 264 households as sample size using Cochran formula in a cluster classified sampling method in summer and autumn of 2019. The spatial distribution of sustainability of rural settlements using the GIS software in the studied area indicated the condition of 56 villages as unsustainable, 23 as relatively unsustainable and 6 villages as sustainable. The results of multivariate regression showed that in terms of influencing the unsustainability of the population of rural settlements in the studied area, the economic, physical, environmental and social factors were in the first to fourth ranks, with beta coefficients of 0.511, 0.478, 0.363 and 0.218, respectively.