فصلنامه روستا و توسعه
سال بیست و ششم شماره 1 (پیاپی 101، بهار 1402)

The most important issue regarding the impact of information and communication technologies on rural development is its acceptance by local communities, which is influenced by various factors such as its compatibility with local conditions, the level of awareness of communities about the role of information and communication, and the level of efficiency. Shandiz district is one of the districts of Torghabe Shandiz County, which has witnessed the expansion of access to information and communication technology services in recent years. Considering the functional position of this region in the field of tourism and its related businesses, the development and access to information and communication technologies and improving the level of awareness of how to use it, can provide the economic and social development of the villagers of this region. In this regard, the present research aims to evaluate the level of acceptance of information and communication technologies in the villages of this district and also to explain the factors affecting the acceptance of information and communication technologies by the villagers in order to develop its effects in the region.

The current research is an applied study that was conducted in the field. Data collection methods include documentary studies, observation, interviews and completing a researcher-made questionnaire in a rural community in Torghabe Shandiz county. The statistical population of the research was randomly selected 12 villages. Also, the sample size of the research includes 196 households, which was determined by Cochran's formula with an error of 0.07, and by correcting the samples of less than 10 households in some villages, the number of samples increased to 234 people. In order to check the reliability of the questionnaire and indicators made from Cronbach's alpha, and to check the validity of the questionnaire, the opinions of university professors and experts in the field of information and communication technology and rural studies were considered. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the collected data.

Chi-square test was used to check the variable status of information and communication technology acceptance level. Using the chi-square test, the significance value for all indicators was calculated to be less than 0.05. All indicators of acceptance of information and communication technology are meaningful and can be generalized to the whole society.Examining the relationship between individual variables (age, education and income) with the acceptance of information and communication technology shows that there is no relationship between the level of income and the acceptance of information and communication technology. But there is a direct and positive relationship between education level and technology adoption. Also, there is an inverse relationship between age and acceptance of technology.In order to measure and compare the average level of acceptance of information and communication technology among the users of communication technologies, the t-test with two independent groups was used. According to the results, people who do not believe in the use of information and communication technologies have a lower level of acceptance than people who consider the use of these technologies useful and effective. Also, single people have a higher level of acceptance than married people, and people who have gardens and handicrafts use communication and information technologies more. Having a computer and having access to the Internet also increase the level of acceptance.In the following, exploratory factor analysis was used to extract factors affecting acceptance. A total of 4 factors (education and facilities, cultural and religious, economic and individual) were extracted and named according to the nature of the variables.In order to investigate the influence of factors affecting the acceptance of information and communication technology on the villagers' acceptance of these technologies, the simultaneous regression model (Enter Method) has been used. The coefficient of determination that shows the degree of explanation of the variance and changes of the dependent variable i.e. the degree of acceptance of information and communication technologies by the 4 independent variables i.e. education and facilities, cultural and religious factors, economic and individual factors, is equal to 0.84 which shows that the indicators of the independent variable explain 84% of the changes related to the dependent variable.Among the independent variables, the "cultural and religious" variable has the greatest role in predicting changes in the dependent variable. After that, there is the variable of education and facilities, and finally, the economic variable is able to predict the changes of the dependent variable by 0.35%.

According to the objectives of the research, the findings of the research confirm that the acceptance of new technologies among the villagers depends on many individual and general factors such as their education level, age, etc. Also, the research findings show that single people have a higher level of acceptance than married people. Also, according to the results, the use of information and communication technology has been more among the villagers who own gardens or produce handicrafts, and the reason for this was the use of this tool for selling and marketing processed products and increasing the income of this group of villagers. The findings of the field investigations showed that Virani village, being in a short distance from the city of Mashhad and having furniture production workshops, generally has got more connections with the city dwellers and tourists, and also has more modern technologies for selling and marketing of its products and, therefore, the level of acceptance and use of information and communication technologies is higher among the residents of this village.Considering the increase in the use of information and communication technologies in rural areas, as well as the youth-oriented nature of the users of these technologies, in order to guide the correct use and reduce the challenges in this area such as corruption and fraud, the need to strengthen and provide educational and cultural background for adequate acceptance of technologies is one of the most important requirements. According to the results obtained, training and creating the right facilities, removing religious misconceptions and cultural doubts, increasing transparency in the field of different dimensions of technologies in different groups, highlighting the advantages and desirable uses of technologies to villagers and controlled and guided access to it can greatly help the basic and correct acceptance of technologies in rural areas. In this regard, educational and cultural institutions, media and families play an important role.

Considering capabilities including good weather conditions, four types of climate, raining, and fertile soil, Ilam province has many entrepreneurship potentials and opportunities in agricultural sector. It is obvious that recognizing entrepreneurial opportunities in agricultural sector and reducing unemployment rate are of high importance in such conditions. Despite the significance of this issue, researchers have not paid much attention to recognition of women’s entrepreneurship opportunities. Considering that entrepreneurship is a capacity to discover and utilize profitable opportunities in a competitive market, a low level of understanding and recognition of entrepreneurship opportunities by Iranian entrepreneurs is notable. Accordingly, it can be inferred that not recognizing existent potentials and opportunities in the agricultural sector for women is the main reason for the low rate of employment among women, thus improving capabilities to recognize entrepreneurial opportunities among job seekers is one of the best solutions to resolve unemployment and to develop entrepreneurship.

The current study is a practical interpretive research. In terms of method, it is a qualitative research in which an inductive approach has been utilized. Semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis were utilized to analyze the data and the used texts, respectively. Semi-structured interview by an exploratory approach was utilized to achieve the goals of the qualitative research and to extract indicators related to recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities. Five selected female entrepreneurs in 2019, 6 professors in entrepreneurship field who were familiar with agricultural sector's concerns, and 6 employees in Agricultural Jahad Organizations with more than 15 years of service, were interviewed using a semi-structured interview. Non-probability and purposive sampling using a snowball sampling approach was utilized to select the sample. Selecting the sample was continued to ensure sufficiency and saturation of the data and to ensure that the next samples do not provide different information. In this study, 17 participants were interviewed. Lincoln and Guba’s evaluation was utilized to investigate the reliability and validity of the coding stage in analyzing qualitative context.

Qualitative analysis of field interviews and their implementation and coding showed that among the main themes of recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities for rural women, “psychological features” by 77 frequencies were the main themes. This main theme includes some secondary themes such as creativity, independence, the need for cognition, self-efficacy in recognizing entrepreneurial opportunities, and the ability to understand and organize information. Alertness with a frequency of 62 was the second main theme. This includes primary knowledge, social networks, evaluation of information, and connecting new information and primary knowledge. “Entrepreneurial intelligence” by frequency of 60 was the 3rd main theme. It includes secondary themes such as entrepreneurial insight, cognitive intelligence, social intelligence, venture intelligence, and provocative intelligence. The 4th main theme was “environmental supports” with a frequency of 47. It includes financial, social, cultural, and political support. The 5th theme was “ human capital” with a frequency of 33. This theme includes cognitive knowledge and experience. “Social capital” which includes connected philanthropy was the 6th theme with a frequency of 29. Turbulence as the 7th main theme by frequency of 27 includes secondary themes such as factors related to environment and personality factors.

Analyzing information and the interviews showed that the main drivers for recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities can be categorized into seven categories ( social capital, human capital, psychological features, turbulence, entrepreneurial intelligence, alertness, and environmental support). Generally, in the current study, 124 initial codes, 97 conceptual codes, 25 basic ( main) themes, and 7 organizing (secondary) themes were recognized and extracted using thematic analysis of 17 interviews.

Access to food is the concept of sustainable physical and economic access to resources to provide food items needed by society. Although in line with population growth the production of agricultural products has increased, the access of the people to the food has decreased and it has caused hidden hunger and food insecurity on a large scale. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 60% of child deaths in developing countries are the result of chronic hunger and malnutrition. In Iran, the level of food insecurity is reported about 23%, and the situation of access to food in both physical and economic dimensions is far worse in rural than urban areas. For example, the level of food insecurity in the rural areas of Qarasu in West Azerbaijan is reported 59.4%. Lack of access to sufficient food and the occurrence of food insecurity are affected by various factors, including economic, social, cultural, political and environmental. As a result, due to the importance of access to food, this study tried to investigate the factors affecting the access of rural households to food in Shavoor district.

Current research is a non-experimental survey research with a quantitative approach. The statistical population was all the rural households of Shavoor district (N= 2624), of which 300 households (n= 300) were selected as a sample using the stratified sampling method with proportional assignment. The data used in this research was primary data that was collected by a questionnaire. The validity of the data collection tool was done based on the point of view of specialists, and Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to determine its reliability. The value of this coefficient for different parts of the questionnaire was between 0.765 and 0.873, which indicates the appropriate reliability of the research tool. This study used SPSS, Excel, and SmartPLS for data analysis. In order to inferentially analyze the data, confirmatory factor analysis based on partial least square (PLS) method was used.

The findings showed that the average age of the respondents was over 47 years old, 85.7% were married, 28.7% were also illiterate. The average number of people per household in this study was 5.86 people. The average number of active people among the studied households was about two. Most households (41.3%) had an income of less than two million tomans per month and 58.3% of the households could not save any money. Although the main occupation of most (31%) heads of the studied households was agriculture, most of the households did not possess agricultural land. Also, the average area of irrigated and orchard lands and the number of light and heavy livestock of each studied household were 2.70 hectares, 0.37 hectares, 2.80 heads and 1.80 heads, respectively. According to the results of the confirmatory factor analysis based on Partial Least Squares (PLS) method, among the three main dimensions (physical, economic and continuity of access), the physical access to food is more unfavorable (0.458) than the economic access (0.900) and continuity of access (0.909). Based on the research findings, economic (0.528), social (0.362), and individual and family (0.340) factors are the most important factors affecting rural households' access to food respectively. Among the economic factors, the income variable has a greater impact on food access. Food consumption pattern and the education level of the head of the household, respectively among the social and the individual-family factors are very important and have a significant effect on improving the access of households to food. Various studies have emphasized the effect of the low level of education of heads of households in a society on poverty and food insecurity. Also, physical factors play a decisive role in households' access to food, and these factors indirectly affect the level of rural households' access to food.

In this research, an attempt was made to analyze the factors affecting the improvement of access to food for rural households in Shavor village located in Susa county. The findings of this research showed that despite the fact that the main source of income for most of the rural households in this village is from the agricultural sector, the situation of rural households' access to food is not favorable, especially in terms of physical access. And various factors, including economic, individual-family factors, social and physical, have directly and indirectly affected this access. In order to improve the access level of rural households to food, it is suggested to provide the necessary background and platform for diversifying rural jobs and improving their income sources. Creation and support of various organizations (such as consumer cooperatives) with the aim of providing facilities and supply of food items at a better price and with more variety to the villagers, targeting the granting of subsidies to agricultural inputs, adopting appropriate support policies for the price of agricultural products, strengthening the market and the transportation network for agricultural products are among the best solutions to improve the level of access of villagers to food.

In order to alleviate poverty and reduce migration, create social welfare, preserve the characteristics of traditional culture, preserve the traditional fabric, and create job opportunities, sustainable tourism is considered a basic and necessary element in rural areas. In general, tourism contributes to the economic development of the local community and improves the quality of life in rural areas; therefore, this industry can be introduced as the most important strategy for rapid employment generation in some areas. Consequently, in recent years, the importance of the tourism industry as a solution to reduce rural poverty, especially in developing countries, has been noticed by policymakers. Currently, the main emphasis to achieve poverty is focused on the role and impact of sustainable tourism. Sustainable tourism plays a fundamental role in the poverty of rural households by increasing economic growth and maintaining and increasing food production, creating intergenerational justice, and maintaining basic production resources. In this regard, in the present research, modeling of the effects of sustainable tourism in the poverty of rural households and answering the following questions are discussed:1- What is the level of poverty in the villages of the study area? 2- Which dimension of sustainable rural tourism is the most important factor affecting poverty in the studied area?

The statistical population of the current research consists of households of tourism target villages, rural managers of Ardel city, experts and elites. According to the announcement of the General Department of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province, Ardel city has 10 tourism target villages, and this research was conducted in the period of December to February of 2018. Ten villages targeted for tourism have 3038 households and 11174 people. Using Cochran's formula, the number of samples required to complete the questionnaire of 310 households was calculated. Based on the nature and method of data collection, the current research is a descriptive-survey research (questionnaire), the design of the questionnaire indicators has been done using the theoretical research literature, the review of relevant research and interviews with experts and managers, and the type of questions is based on the Likert scale. 5 spectrums were categorized from very low (1) to very high (5). Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (logistic regression and independent t-test) were used to analyze the data. Logistic regression is a statistical technique to show the effect of quantitative variables on a bivariate dependent variable. Logistic regression analysis is similar to linear regression analysis, but with the difference that in logistic regression, the dependent variable is a bivariate variable.

Findings show that 31.7% of households are in poverty and 68.3% are in the non-poor group. Based on the logistic regression model, the predictability of the model has been discussed. Based on this, the results show that in the first stage, where only the social dimension of sustainable tourism is included, the accuracy of classification of people by the model is equal to 68%, that is, in this stage, 95 households are correctly classified as poor and 207 households are correctly classified as non-poor; while 3 households are wrongly called poor and 4 households are also wrongly classified as non-poor. In the second stage, with the introduction of the economic dimension of sustainable tourism, the resolution of the model increased to 79%, but in the third stage, with the introduction of the physical dimension of sustainable tourism, there was no change in the resolution. Also, the results show that the discrimination power of the model for non-poor strata is higher than for poor groups, so that in the fourth step and with the inclusion of all four dimensions of sustainable development, the discrimination power for non-poor households is equal to 91.6%. According to this relationship, the economic dimension of sustainable development has the greatest impact and the environmental dimension has the least impact; therefore, in the final result, it can be said that within the scope of the study, the indicators of the economic dimension of sustainable tourism, the most important of which are the diversity of economic activities, the amount of income, access to financial credits, etc., are effective in reducing the poverty of rural households.

According to the results, to deal with rural poverty, due to the limited facilities and the extent of the rural community, and also to ensure the success in reducing poverty, the economic diversification programs such as the expansion of tourism can be used. Also, considering the two-way relationship between tourism development and increasing investment in villages, it is very important to create incentive mechanisms for investment according to the potential of the studied villages; Also, national, regional and local governments should consider tourism as one of the strategic pillars of rural development policies to understand the role that this area can play as part of a diverse rural economy and implement active policies to promote it; National, regional and local governments should fully integrate tourism into their development plans. Factors that should be considered include the territorial identity and specific characteristics of rural destinations, as well as policies for distributing tourism benefits throughout the country and turning tourism into an effective tool for comprehensive, resilient and sustainable development for rural areas.

The village is the oldest form of human settlements and rural living is one of the oldest ways of social life. Paying attention to the village and rural dwellers has a high importance and a special place in the world. Rural development has always been one of the main components and elements of national development. Development is not just an economic phenomenon and many societies need to plan and identify their actual and potential facilities and resources in order to strengthen the foundations of development when also they need to correct and adjust the imbalances and multitude of economic, social and cultural issues and problems. The lack of a comprehensive evaluation based on scientific methods of the degree of development and its level of imbalance in different levels of cities and villages is one of the main obstacles in identifying priorities and formulating provincial development plans. For this purpose, paying attention to the approaches of regional balance and regional policy making and planning to reduce existing heterogeneity and inequalities requires studying and recognizing the importance of the characteristics of each region with regard to its position in the entire regional system. The current study is conducted to determine the development rate in rural districts of Lorestan province as well as to rank them using the VIKOR and TOPSIS analysis method.

Multi-instrument decision-making techniques are suitable for ranking in a set of existing indicators with respect to multi-dimensional and multi-contradictory features. In Iran, the statistical analysis of the provinces has been published by the Iranian Statistics Center, and the selected indicators play an important role in the development of the regions. In this research, like other studies conducted in the field of evaluating the development levels of villages and rural areas, in order to formulate a regular and logical framework of indicators that express the characteristics of rural development in the study area, based on global experiences, the literature on the subject, and the review of available information from referring to the statistical yearbook of villages of Lorestan province, 110 key and effective indicators in the field of rural development were selected for Lorestan province. The selected indicators are classified in eight different educational, demographic, infrastructural, economic, health and treatment, cultural services, welfare and functional agricultural sectors. After identifying and selecting the indicators,  determined the degree of development of the villages of Lorestan province and rank them based on the level of development were carried out. This did using multi-indicator decision-making techniques (VIKOR and TOPSIS), which are among the best statistical models and calculations in the field of measurement and ranking.

The results show a heterogeneous distribution of facilities and services among rural districts of this province, with Shirvan as a developed region ranked in the first place. In addition, Bazvand and Goudarzi as the second and third place, are developing regions respectively, while other rural districts are considered deprived and relatively deprived regions. Moreover, GolGol, West Kargah, Roumiani, Zhan, Shirvan, Azna, ChalanChulan, and Chamsangar rural districts are ranked in first place in educational, demographic, infrastructure, economic, health service, cultural, welfare, and agricultural indicators respectively. In other words, based on the results of the present research, it can be stated that the rural areas of Lorestan province have an unbalanced distribution in terms of development indicators. So that Shirvan district has all the development indicators (educational, population, infrastructure, economic, health and treatment, service, cultural, welfare and agricultural performance) at a favorable level and therefore it is considered developed. In the same way, the development indicators in Bazund and Guderzi villages are improving and for this reason they are at the developing level. Meanwhile, a small amount of development indicators have been distributed in Rumiani, Silakhor, West Kargah, Durood, North Mirbeg, West Pachelek, Chalancholan, East Japleq, East Silakhor, Yusufvand, Heshmatabad, Mozafari and Zhan villages. For this reason, they are among relatively deprived villages. In total, based on the findings, 70 sub-districts of Lorestan province also lack development indicators and are evaluated as deprived of development.

Based on current research findings, it can be applied by policy makers, planners and relevant managers to improve rural development management and policy-making in order to achieve sustainable development.

Drought is a complex natural catastrophe with no universally accepted definition. Each definition reflects the differences in regions, needs, and disciplinary approaches. Some consider the definition of drought as an agricultural drought that has become a serious threat to food security while deeply affecting production and farmers’ livelihood. Farmers in some regions have greater exposure to drought than others, and farmers in each region face their own unique set of challenges. As a result, coping behaviors and strategies used by different farmers are very different than their risk management. Recent efforts have recognized the importance of applying risk reduction behaviors, both during and after the drought, to prevent environmental problems. It would be necessary to focus on the promotion of appropriate drought management practices among farmers to achieve a more sustainable and environmentally alternative livelihood where pro-environmental behavior is set as a core factor. Thus, when investigating a sustainable alternative livelihood where pro-environmental behavior is set as a core factor, it is necessary to focus on the promotion of drought management practices among smallholder farmers. Further, using institutional drought management mechanisms as effective factors to improve sustainable livelihood under drought is very appropriate.

From a holistic sustainable livelihood perspective, these mechanisms might be divided into three categories: integrated drought risk management, comprehensive reduction of damages, and control the consequences based on indigenous knowledge, that reduce vulnerability and attempt to change the surroundings under drought. Thus, in this study, we aim to use the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) to explain farmers’ pro-environmental behavior, and we subsequently apply our conceptualization of the PTM to explain the effects of pro-environmental behavior as well as some institutional management mechanisms to achieve a sustainable livelihood in the Borkhar-Isfahan region of Iran. The PMT, a general theory of persuasive communication that incorporates individual and social factors, provides a set of predictors for human behavior, which balances two main processes, threat appraisal and coping appraisal. The threat appraisal process involves individual assessment of threat levels and includes two constructs: a) perceived severity and b) perceived vulnerability. In this study, perceived severity is conceptualized as the degree to which smallholder farmers perceive the effects of drought. The coping appraisal process also involves individual assessment of internal and external factors and includes three constructs: a) self-efficacy, b) response efficacy, and c) response costs. Farmers perceived self-efficacy have a positive and direct effect on their actual farming and non-farming practices in a drought. Response efficacy refers to an individual's belief; in this case, farmers evaluate the types of adaptive behaviors and various measures to deal with the threat. However, in this study, based on the research framework, farmers’ pro-environmental behaviors are influenced by two threat appraisal factors, and three coping appraisal factors. Furthermore, sustainable alternative livelihood is directly determined by pro-environmental behavior and institutional management mechanisms.This paper specifically focuses on a semi-arid region of Borkhar-Isfahan region of Iran, and smallholder farmers living in Borkhar region are generally some of the most ecologically, socially, and politically marginalized people. The population of this study was comprised of rural smallholder farmers who produce agricultural and horticultural crops under drought between 2018-2020. According to the Isfahan Agriculture-Jahad Organization, there are about 3666 smallholder farmers in the two districts of Borkhar, which consists of 12 villages (N=3666). The study sample consisted of 293 farmers, based on Cochran’s formula, and was selected through stratified random sampling (n=293). Data were collected with a questionnaire consisting of four sections: 1) demographic characteristics, 2) pro-environmental behavior, 3) institutional management mechanisms, and 4) sustainable alternative livelihoods. The sub-scales were developed based on a 5-point Likert scale. The questions of these sections werederived from the research framework, confirmed by the previous studies and then modified to fit the objectives of this study. The questionnaire validity and reliability were measured through a pre-test. Then, descriptive analysis was done using SPSS and to testing the research model, this study also used the partial least squares (PLS) technique of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using Smart-PLS.

Results show that self-efficacy, perceived vulnerability, and response efficacy have significant positive effects on the farmers’ pro-environmental behavior under drought. Moreover, self-efficacy has the greatest direct role in explaining farmers’ pro-environmental behavior. Also, based on confirmatory factor analysis, “ability to implement best practices to improve farm management” accrued the highest loadings and is the main indicator for explaining self-efficacy. Furthermore, the results revealed that perceived vulnerability significantly influenced farmers' pro-environmental behavior. Based on confirmatory factor analysis, “possible threat to food security” is the main indicator for explaining perceived vulnerability. Thus, understanding vulnerability to environmental issues raises farmers’ awareness and attitudes toward prevention effects; therefore, when farmers’ perceptions of vulnerability are very high, it increases the likelihood of an adaptive response. Our results also show that perceived severity and response costs have a significant negative influence on the farmers’ pro-environmental behavior. Threat appraisal is based on weighing the benefits of not engaging in pro-environmental behavior under drought. Thus, the greater the severity of the risk perceived by individuals, the more it reduces the likelihood of drought coping behaviors. Also, the study showed that response costs have a negative effect on pro-environmental behavior. So, whenever response costs decreased, the higher perceived costs of pro-environmental practices reduce the probability of protective behavior. Therefore, when a farmer evaluates the implementation of an environmental behavior as laborious, expensive, unpleasant, time-consuming, he will be reluctant to implement it. The findings further show that farmers' pro-environmental behavior and integrated drought risk management are the main predictors of achieving a sustainable alternative livelihood. Moreover, conservation of natural habitats and biodiversity, and providing the necessary training to increase farmers’ knowledge and skills, were found to be highly important indicators that enhance sustainable livelihood under drought. Therefore, concentrating on efforts and shifting the focus to these indicators lead to increased farmer’s livelihood resilience in the long run.

Gilan province, one of the country's tourism poles in terms of its privileged natural location and climatic conditions, has many natural, historical, religious, cultural, social and economic attractions and numerous God-given gifts. According to the statistical yearbook of 2015, out of a total of 258 residences in the country, there was one tourism residence unit in Gilan province. In 2016, there were 5 accommodation units out of a total of 441 accommodation units, and in 2017, out of 540 ecotourism accommodation units, there were only three official ecotourism units, and this number reached 14 units in 2018. This statistic has grown significantly in the summer of 2019 and the number of eco-tourism residences in this province has reached 48 units. The rapid growth of ecotourism accommodations in recent years makes it necessary to provide proper services to tourists. This leads to the satisfaction and loyalty of tourists towards ecotourism accommodations. In this regard, the present research was designed and carried out with the aim at investigating the satisfaction with the service quality and the loyalty of rural tourists to the eco-tourist accommodations in Gilan province. In this regard, the American model of measuring customer satisfaction is the basis for measuring the satisfaction and loyalty of tourists. According to this model, the satisfaction of tourists in ecotourism accommodations is directly influenced by the quality of services, the expectations of tourists, and the value perceived by them. In addition to the direct effect, the quality of services and the expectations of tourists affect satisfaction indirectly through the perceived value. The satisfaction of tourists affects the loyalty of tourists both directly and indirectly (through the complaint reduction variable).

The study was descriptive - correlation and conducted through a survey method. The statistical population of the study included all rural tourists of ecotourism residences in Gilan province in 2020 year. The sample size was 315 tourists which were selected among five cities by using stratified random sampling method. The research instrument was a questionnaire whose content validity was confirmed by professors and relevant experts and its reliability was determined by calculating the Cronbach's alpha coefficient between 0.72-0.89. Data were analyzed using SPSS software. To describe the variables mean, standard deviation, frequency, percentage and cumulative percentage were used. To investigate the relationship between the variables, the correlation coefficient was used, and to calculate the difference between satisfaction and loyalty in different groups, the Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis H tests were used. Finally, path analysis has been used to investigate the direct and indirect effects of variables on the dependent variable.

According to the results, tourists' satisfaction and loyalty to ecotourism residences were assessed at a good level. The results showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between service qualities, customer expectations, perceived value with the dependent variable of tourist satisfaction at the level of 1%. In addition, there was a positive and significant relationship between tourists' satisfaction and complaint reduction with the dependent variable of loyalty at the level of 1%. In comparison, the perceived value variable has a higher correlation with the tourism service satisfaction variable. In other words, the valuableness of the services received makes tourists more satisfied. Meanwhile, according to the results of the path analysis, the received service quality variable has the highest total causal effect on the satisfaction variable, and the service perceived value variable ranks second. The results of Mann–Whitney U tests showed that there was a significant difference between men and women according to the variables of satisfaction and loyalty at 5% level. In this case, men are more loyal than women. The reason for this difference is probably due to women's higher expectations of the services provided by eco-tourist accommodations. According to the results of path analysis, the variable of services quality has the most total causal effect on satisfaction and the variable of reducing complaints has the most direct and total causal effect on tourist loyalty. Dealing with tourists' requests, providing compensatory services, as well as the appropriate quality of the services provided, will lead to the loyalty of the tourist and his/her next visit to the tourist accommodation.

In the present research, the satisfaction and loyalty of tourists in eco-tourism accommodations has been measured using a valid and documented framework. Examining the mean of the main variables shows that all these variables are at a medium to high level from the point of view of rural tourists. In other words, tourists have evaluated the current state of service provided, fulfillment of expectations, value of services received, satisfaction with services provided, addressing possible shortcomings and loyalty to eco-tourism accommodations in an appropriate situation. In order to improve the quality of eco-tourism accommodation services and also since the monitoring of the implementation is considered a basic process, it is suggested to evaluate the performance system in eco-tourism accommodation, especially in the field of services to tourists.Considering the significant growth of eco-tourism residences in recent years in Gilan province and in order to prevent a merely quantitative growth and also with the aim of sustainability and permanence of these residences, the results of the present research can be taken into consideration by the officials and owners of the accommodations in order to gain the satisfaction and loyalty of the tourists.

Rural communities, as a large part of the population of developing countries, which are mainly food producers, are facing problems in providing their own food. Due to the trend of population increase on one hand and the reduction of environmental capacity on the other hand, it will be more difficult to provide food security in the future. In this regard, scientists have come up with various solutions to solve this crisis, and in most of these solutions, attention has been paid to sustainable agriculture and maintaining the relationship between its indicators, including the environment, agricultural exploitation, and food security. Nowadays, the position of animal husbandry activity in food security strategies has been increasingly improved. Because animal husbandry can play an important role in increasing income and increasing food security and nutrition, and it can also provide fertilizer and kinetic energy to the system, it can make agriculture more sustainable. However, few empirical studies have been conducted that show that there is a causal relationship between livestock ownership and food security. Therefore, it is felt necessary to pay attention to this category in order to ensure the food security of rural households.

The current research is based on the practical purpose and is descriptive-analytical in nature. The statistical population of the research is the households of the villages of Zanjan Township, which has 248 inhabited villages. Using the modified Cochran formula, 54 villages were selected as sample villages. The sampling method is simple probability (lottery method). The number of samples required to complete the questionnaire was determined by using Cochran's formula of 290 households, in the following, according to the number of households in each village, the number of samples in each village was determined. The method of collecting information in the current research is library and field, and descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data, and the food insecurity scale method was used to calculate the level of food security.

Descriptive findings related to the food security status of families with children on the scale of food insecurity show that the highest level of food insecurity is related to the index "In the past month, has it happened that you or one of the family members could not have enough resources to eat the foods you like?" with an average of 5.44 and the lowest level of food insecurity is related to the index "In the past month, has it happened that there is nothing to eat in your home due to not having enough money to buy food?" with an average of 2.79. Also, the descriptive findings related to the food security status of childless families in the food insecurity scale method show that the highest level of food insecurity is related to the index "In the past month, has it happened that you or one of the family members did not have enough resources to eat the foods you like? "with an average of 5.33 and the lowest level of food insecurity is related to the index "In the past month, has it happened that you or one of your family members did not eat anything for a whole day and night due to not having enough food?" with an average of 3.16.In the following, the investigations related to the average livestock ownership in the studied area show that 39.28 households own traditional poultry, 32.89 households own heavy livestock and 43.11 households own light livestock. Finally, examining the intensity and direction of the statistical relationship between animal husbandry and food security in the study area shows that animal husbandry has made a significant difference in the food security of the rural households under study. So that in households with food security, the correlation is 0.252 and in households with food insecurity without hunger, the correlation decreases (0.048), but it still has a positive relationship. Also, in households with food insecurity with moderate hunger, the correlation coefficient is -0.279 and for food insecurity with severe hunger, the correlation coefficient is -0.107. Therefore, it can be said that animal husbandry in rural households has led to the improvement of the food security situation, and with the reduction or elimination of animal husbandry, the food security of rural households also decreases. 

The results related to the investigation of the food security situation in Zanjan Township show that it is unfavorable, so that only 26.37% of the households have food security. However, food insecurity with moderate hunger and food insecurity with extreme hunger have a relatively lower average. This shows the need to pay attention to the factors influencing the improvement of food security in the region. Further, the investigation related to the average livestock in the studied area shows that this part of the research is in line with the studies of Upton (2004). As he points out, light livestock has more fans among livestock farmers due to its lower cost, domestic consumption and domestic sales, and has a positive effect on household food security. Also, the investigations of the relationship between livestock farming and the food security of the studied rural households showed that livestock farming in rural households has led to an improvement in the food security situation, and with the reduction or elimination of livestock farming, the food security of rural households also decreases. In the first stage, the ownership of livestock provides the villagers with the possibility of consuming livestock products, and in the next stage, it is one of the effective factors in food security through the creation of income and the possibility of selling its products and earning income to buy other foodstuffs.

The creation and development of small enterprises in rural areas will lead to the development and prosperity of the village economy. But in recent years, the cooperative sector has not been successful in production and services, and it seems that they are facing internal and external structural problems including weaknesses such as insufficient information, weak human resources and poor management, lack of financial resources and old technology, and issues such as acquiring knowledge and skills, better access to inputs and more effective marketing of products. These problems have made cooperative companies unable to be dynamic in their business environment and have not acted intelligently in this direction. Meanwhile, organizational intelligence is efficient and effective in the ability to solve problems and respond to the challenges of the external environment. Therefore, adaptability and organizational intelligence are essential for organizations. A company's intelligence creates intelligent activities and methods with market knowledge and environmental scanning which it uses as an adaptive tool to cope with its ever-changing environment. However, the village production cooperatives have not been able to achieve their desired goals in the competitive market due to not having an intelligent structure. Therefore, considering the acute conditions of rural production cooperatives in order to achieve the goals of sustainable development, this research was conducted with the aim of identifying and determining the dimensions and intelligent organizational components and modeling the mutual relationships for the development of rural production cooperatives.

The current research was conducted in two parts, qualitative and qualitative. In the qualitative part, the indicators, components and dimensions of the model were identified and extracted using grounded theory method and in the quantitative part, the relationships between the elements of the model were determined by the interpretive-structural modeling method. The research community of experts included the managers of Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, and Ministry of Agriculture–Jahad, who were selected in a non-probabilistic, purposeful way and with the snowball technique in the number of 12 people until reaching theoretical saturation. The method of field data collection is through semi-in-depth interview and researcher questionnaire. The content validity of the indicators was analyzed by the Lawsheh Coefficient Method, and we used the fuzzy Delphi method to screen the components.

Organizational intelligent components for development of rural production cooperatives as follows: intelligence enablers (human intelligence, managerial intelligence, technological intelligence, strategic intelligence, technical intelligence), organizational intelligence capabilities (organizational learning, information and data, customer relationship management, intelligent thinking, process), Intelligent development contexts (infrastructure, cooperation and communication, financial, structure), intelligent governance (government support and incentives, organs and institutions, rules and regulations, competition), intelligence strategy (competition development, market development), intelligence performance (sustainable competitive advantage, productivity improvement, service improvement, rural development). The results of the quantitative part and interpretative-structural modeling showed that the components in the structural model are located at 12 levels, so that the components of "laws", " government support and incentives", "competition", and "structure" is the most effective and basic components and "competition development" and "market development" is the most impressive components for the success of organizational intelligence in rural production cooperatives.

Based on the results, improving the organizational intelligence of village production cooperatives depends on "market development" and "competition development". In order to improve these components, the most effective components should be improved, which in this research are "laws" and "government support and incentives", and managers should make the improvement of these components the first priority of the decision for cooperative development. This finding shows that the laws are not suitable due to the rapid changes in the business environment, and the government's support, such as the information transparency law and the creation of databases, the development of social support, and the comprehensive package of special incentives. Youth cooperatives and knowledge-based cooperatives should be improved in the field of data mining and optimal financing policies. Also, the two components "competition" and "structure" are at the second level of importance and effectiveness, and this finding shows that the creation of competition between cooperatives gives motivation to gain competition in the market, and cooperatives need to have a new structure.

The rural economy, especially its agricultural sector, is facing various risks and policies. Support tools, in such conditions, play an important role in maintaining its economic growth. Although the rural areas of Iran are the environment of industrial, service and agricultural activities, according to the share of employment and income sources of the villagers, the dominant economic activity in these areas is agriculture. For this reason, in comparison with industry and services, any changes that occur in the indicators related to the agricultural sector will have a greater impact on the level of development of the villagers. Risk and uncertainty are considered to be prominent features of economic activities. Risks can be of natural origin (natural risk) or economic origin (market risk). The agricultural sector is more susceptible to both natural and market risks than industrial and service activities. Examining the relationship between insurance and economic growth has shown that the insurance industry affects economic growth through 5 different channels (facilitating trade and commerce, effective risk management, strengthening financial stability, equipping domestic savings and support) in direct and indirect ways.

In this study, the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) estimation method was used to investigate the effect of agricultural insurance on the value added of Iranian agriculture. The time period is the annual data of 1989-2019, and the required statistics are from the systems and reports available on the website of the Central Bank of Iran (www.cbi.ir), the website of the Iranian Statistics Center (www.amar.org.ir) and the website of the National Productivity Organization of Iran (www.npo.gov.ir). The penetration rate of agricultural insurance has been calculated using the available statistics. E-views software was used to estimate the desired regression model.

The results of the study have shown that statistically, the variables have positive and significant effects according to theoretical expectations on the economy of the agricultural sector of Iran:The agricultural net capital stock has a positive and significant effect on the value added of the agricultural sector (1.02); so that with an increase of one percent in the agricultural net capital stock, the amount of value added of the agricultural sector also increases by 1.02 percent. In fact, more investment and increasing the amount of capital stock provides the necessary platform for the expansion of production activities in the agricultural sector.The estimated coefficient for the agricultural labor force (0.04) indicates that the role of the agricultural labor force in the economic added value of this sector is positive, significant, but small. With an increase of one percent in the agricultural labor force, the amount of the value added of the agricultural sector also increases by 0.04 percent. Increasing the use of human resources, on the one hand, will lead to the timely performance of operations related to the production of products and its increase, and on the other hand, the use of skilled labor will increase the amount of production in this sector by increasing human capital.The positive and significant coefficient of the productivity variable of the net agricultural capital stock (1.03) shows that with a one percent increase in the productivity of the net capital stock in the agricultural sector, the amount of economic value added of this sector also increases by 1.03 percent. The effects of productivity of production factors, including capital, on economic growth and agricultural value added from two channels show an increase in production and a decrease in their respective costs, which is an expected issue in the evolving agricultural production method of Iran.The effect of agricultural labor productivity on the value added of the agricultural sector has become positive and significant (0.01). So that with a one-percent increase in the productivity of the agricultural labor force, the amount of value added of the agricultural sector will increase also insignificantly (0.01 percent).The variable of agricultural insurance penetration has a positive and significant effect on the value added of the agricultural sector (0.01). So that with an increase of one percent in the insurance penetration variable, the amount of value added of the agriculture sector also increases slightly (0.01 percent). The effect of agricultural insurance on its economic growth by compensating a part of production costs (in case of damages) and giving assurance to agriculture in the face of possible risks, preserves farmers' production incentives.

Considering the high share of agricultural activities in the total economic activities of rural areas of Iran, adopting any policy and implementing any type of action that will lead to the strengthening of value added and, as a result, the economic growth of the agricultural sector, will also strengthen the rural economy.The results of the estimation of the regression model of the value added of Iran's agricultural sector indicate a positive and significant effect of the desired variables (agricultural net capital stock, agricultural labor force, agricultural net capital stock productivity, agricultural labor productivity and agricultural insurance penetration coefficient) in the period of time. This is about the value added of agriculture and as a result, the economic growth of this sector.Although the positive effect of the penetration coefficient of agricultural insurance on the amount of value added and, as a result, the economic growth of Iran's agricultural sector during about three decades of the implementation of the agricultural insurance program, has revealed the importance of insurance in the process of economic growth of this sector, the low coefficient of its effectiveness (0.01 percent), can express several issues:Agricultural insurance in Iran has not yet adequately covered all agricultural products and assets.The amount of insurance support does not answer all the risks in Iran's agricultural sector (market and non-market).The implementation of the country's agricultural insurance programs and policies, despite the high share and extensive cost burden on the government's annual budget (for example, more than 3200 billion tomans in the 2021 budget to pay the government's share to the agricultural products insurance fund), is not targeted and it has encountered deviations in implementation.It should be noted that Iran's agricultural sector (as in many other countries), unlike the country's industry and service sectors, does not have the required capacity and infrastructure for the development of private insurance related to production, and the policy of agricultural insurance development until meeting the necessary conditions, should be carried out through the state sector and increasing its participation.It will be very necessary to adopt a set of policies and measures that prevent capital outflow from the agricultural sector in particular and rural areas in general (through improving the exchange relationship between the agricultural sector and rural areas with other economic sectors and urban areas).