The Relationship between the Economic Action Pattern and Resilience in the Face of Crisis

After the 2008 crisis, the concept of resilience was introduced as one of the most important key factors in reducing vulnerability to crises. After this period, studies were more intensively done around this concept, to which special attention was paid in social sciences and sociology. Yet, studying the concept of resilience and paying attention to it in different dimensions is more important to countries with a high risk. One of the most risky countries with both natural and unnatural causes is Iran, a country that frequently faces various economic shocks and crises in terms of both its geographical location and type of connection to the outside world. Each type of crisis can threaten livelihoods of families and reduce welfare in the society. Lack of attention to the concept of resilience has caused the Iranian society to undergo a crisis period in recent years. It no longer has its normal function. In such an event, people's participations in the overcoming process of crisis have decreased and the negative effects of risks have increased. Due to the high impact of resilience on enhancing social resistance and the declining trend of social harms, as well as the need for the further study of the Iranian society in this area, the present research focused on the concept of resilience despite providing its accurate description. Also, it tried to identify the extent of its impact on the economic actions of households in adverse economic conditions with regard to its current situation in various dimensions.  

The current investigation was of a survey type, besides being of an applied type due to the possibility of using its results by the authorities. The statistical population of this study included all the household heads in Mashhad City in 2022. According to the statistical yearbook of 2016, this city had a population of 3001184 people and consisted of 817250 families. It should be noted that the sample individuals had the necessary dispersion to obtain valid and generalizable information and data. In other words, different social classes were sufficiently present in the sample. Using Cochran's formula, the sample size was calculated to include 399 people, which increased to 450 people so as to better allocate the sample to the subgroups of the statistical population and prevent error reduction. Finally, by removing the unusable items, the sample size was determined to consist of 427 people. Also, a proportionally allocated stratified sampling method was applied. In this way, an attempt was made to equally examine the different social classes of the households. 

In summary, it should be noted that the subjects’ economic actions were analyzed in the 3 areas of resistance, recovery, and creative economic actions, the application of each of which was affected by different variables. The important point to be mentioned in this section was the household heads’ tendencies to use resistance and then recovery actions. In other words, in the current situation, the heads of the households first tried to use resistance economic actions to earn a living and lead their daily lives. The majority of people sought to provide subsistence for themselves and their families on a daily basis and was less inclined to take long-term economic actions. This was understandable in our society, where most people had an income of less than 5 million tomans. By increasing the cost of living in the society, only the extended use of resistance actions could sustain household economy. The results also showed that the households tended to use economic recovery actions. This tendency, however, was more prevalent in the middle-class households. In other words, the households that were relatively better off financially tried to return to their pre-crisis conditions (recent economic turmoil and Corona epidemic) by using actions based on ​recovery strategies. Regarding creative actions, the results revealed that the use of these actions was increasing with the increase of the households’ social class.Creative economic activities had the highest average level in the upper classes and the lowest average level in the lower classes. This result is in line with those obtained by Royla et al. (2017). The researchers also found that by changing the social classes of the households and individuals, their types of action and economic action strategies altered. Finally, according to the results of the present study, it should be noted that paying attention to the concept of resilience can be very effective in overcoming the difficult and critical situations in societies. In addition to reducing the destructive effects of various economic shocks, resilience of any societies and their individuals provides the conditions for their growth and progress.