Survey and Prioritization of Rural Areas Using Environmental Quality Indicators Case: Hemmatabad District (Borujerd County)

TEnvironmental quality and its promotion are important and effective issues in the rural development process. This index has always been considered by experts and planners. In this regard, planning and formulating policies in rural areas with the aim of achieving sustainable development, requires recognizing and analyzing the current situation. In the present study, the status of environmental quality indicators and the prioritization of villages in Hemmatabad district (Borujerd County) have been investigated. The research is applied and the method of doing it is descriptive-analytical. Two methods of documentary and field (questionnaire) have been used to collect the required data. In the questionnaire method, the required data were collected in the form of a questionnaire in 13 sample villages and descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used to analyze the data. The results showed that the environmental quality of the studied villages is above average. Among the studied indices, the most appropriate situation is related to the social environment index (average equal to 38.04) and the most inappropriate situation is related to the quality index of tissue environment and communication networks (average equal to 16.36). The results also indicate that there is a significant relationship between the environmental quality of villages and the tendency to live and the persistence of the population. Finally, the prioritization of the sample villages in terms of the status of environmental quality indicators showed that Valashan village is in the first rank (score 0.9339) and Qaleh No Hakimi village is in the lowest rank (score 0.6774).