Relationship of Local Participation and Rural Development in Miandoab County: A Case Study of Marhamatabad District in Iran

The subject of rural people participation in rural development projects and attention to rural community needs and demands is an inevitable fact in achieving development goals. Thus the importance of this role should be considered in development. This paper considers the consequences of rural people participation in rural development of Marhamatabad district in Miandoab county. The study is a survey and data is collected by a questionnaire and the sample size is equal to 349 of the head of households. The mean of rural people participation, as independent variable, is 53.4 and Kordkandi and Moradkhanlou are categorized as villages with the lowest level of participation and Qepchaq and Firouzabad as the villages with high level of participation. In addition the village development level as dependent variable shows that from the total of 14 villages, 4 villages are categorized as high level of development, 6 as low level of development and 4 as medium level of development. The study uses one way analysis of variance to examine the impacts of rural people participation on rural development (F=12.9) which is significant and it confirms the hypothesis that rural people participation affects rural development.