Causes and Consequences of Reverse Migration to the Rural Areas of Buin and Miandasht County

Migration is a phenomenon common to all countries and reverse migration is reflective of migration from urban to rural areas. It is a phenomenon that gradually increases and could have consequences in the society. The purpose of this study is to investigate environmental, physical, economic, and social causes and consequences of reverse migration to rural areas of Buin and Miandasht. This research is descriptive-analytical in which the data were collected using the library-field method. From the 5 rural districts of this county, 5 villages that had the most reverse migrant households were selected. Then, a sample of 290 reverse migrants was determined and questioned using the Cochran method. According to descriptive data, environmental-physical aspects with a mean of 40.14 have been the most important factors of migration. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis and the path coefficient of the main causes show a 40% influence of social causes, 41.7% of economic causes, and 48.2% of physical-environmental causes on reverse migration. The results of the independent t-test for all variables (i.e. positive and negative consequences of reverse migration) also showed that the average negative effects are physical (29.86%), economic (14.09%), and social (20.90%). The average positive effects are physical (14.38%), economic (24.68%), and social (30.13%). In examining the results, the change in natural landscapes with an average of 3.96 had the greatest environmental-physical impact. The improvement of educational indicators with an average of 3.44 had the greatest social impact and increasing land and housing price with an average of 3.45 had the greatest economic impact.