فصلنامه روستا و توسعه
سال دهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 37، بهار 1386)

The objective of this study is to identify the economic and environmental impacts of tourism on rural areas from the residents’ perspectives. First, a number of environmental and economic indicators have been drawn from the existing literature to examine the effects. Second, required information has been collected through a questionnaire from three sub-districts in the central region of Noushahr county. The research method is descriptive-analytical and to analyze the data, non parametric statistical tests were applied in accordance with the type of data. The study results indicate that tourism has positive economic effects such as increasing employment opportunities and income, as well as negative environmental and economic effects such as raising the price of goods and services, falsely increasing land price, raising the level of noise pollution in the area, and misusing natural resources. According to chi-squared statistic there is a significant agreement among the residents in relation to this subject. The level of tourism impact on economic and environmental dimensions differs significantly among sub-districts. Such that, from the point of view of residents there is a direct relationship between the tourism growth and negative economic impacts.

The agricultural Sector plays an important role in economic growth and development of Yazd province despite all the problems it is facing. This paper explains the role of agricultural sector in economic development of the province from different dimensions such as labour and capital supply, employment generation, provision of food and raw materials, assisting the market and balance of payments. The land operators gain from government public services is not in accordance with the significant and positive contributions they make in economic growth and development of the province. Finally the paper presents some recommendations for strengthening the role of agricultural sector in economic development of the province.

In order to carry out spatial planning and achieve development, all urban, rural and nomad habitats should be addressed specifically. Among these, nomad community has a special status due to its deprivation and difficult living conditions. This has been the justification for attempts to organize the nomad community after the revolution particularly in the second development plan. One of the most important arguments which has normally received the attentions of many policy makers and planners has been to settle down nomad communities. This strategy started in the reign of first Pahlavi with a political inclination and continued to the fourth development plan with a sustainable development inclination which led to villages or centres that were formed spontaneously or exogenously, and insufficient attention to them will cause financial losses as well as a departure from spatial systematization. Studies show that this policy has emanated from views such as social change, modernization, basic needs provision, environmental protection and sustainable development, and in each period, outreach of services, and creation of settlement conditions has been carried out in accordance with the dominating strategy and perspective. A point worth considering is that these villages encounter challenges such as feeble cooperation among executive bodies involved in the settlement, inability to manage the villages, low participation of people in settlement process. If the intention is to provide a sustainable socio-economic and environmental base for these centres, it is necessary to have plans that reduce or omit these challenges effectively.

Village is rather a geographical than a social or economic unit and this geographical unit is a container that contains community and economy. Therefore, the village should be the core of any rural research. Humans and their related socio-economic affairs should not be separated from their geographical environment which affects them. More than 50% of rural people’s income is earned from agricultural activities. In addition, other types of activities are also carried out to provide for the livelihood of rural people such as mining, exploition of mineral water, services and handicrafts. The main argument in this paper is to examine the connection between village formation and mine establishment from two perspectives: a) the time of village and mine establishment, b) socio-economic prosperity. Besides this, delicate points will be addressed such as similarity between village and mine names. This paper is the result of an interdisciplinary work between social science and mine engineering fields.

The purpose of this study is to examine the savings structure in rural areas and the role of factors that can affect it, in order to have insights into rural people behaviors, concerning their investment and saving methods. For this purpose, after understanding the factors that affect savings, and designing key questions, the required information was collected through a field study, and processed and analysed using different statistical indices and econometric models. This study has been carried out in three the provinces of Kermanshah, Ardabil and Fars. The study results show that in addition to household income other variables such as size of household, ownership of irrigated and rain fed lands, outstanding household loans and the educational level of the head of household are important factors in rural savings.

One of the emphasized methods to promote women participation in rural society, as they are half of it, is to form independent women groups for collective action and team work. One of the methods that has been used in rural training and extension is to involve rural women leaders as "facilitators" for mobilization and capacity building in their society. In this study some personal and environmental factors that influence the success of facilitators in East Azarbaijan province will be examined drawing on the results of a field research that used face to face interviews and questionnaires in 6 counties. Questionnaire validity has been assessed by a number of subject specialists and academicians, and its reliability has been measured by using Cronbach's alpha which was equal to 88% and indicates appropriateness of research instruments. Findings show a significant relationship at 99% level between facilitator's success in generation and sustenance of independent women group activities (as dependent variable) and rural women acceptance of facilitators, facilitator connection with extension agents, her awareness of NGO concept (as independent variables). No significant relationship can be detected between dependent variable and variables related to the use of mass communication tools.

Food security is an old challenge in many developing countries including Iran and it is a function of two factors: population increasing growth and the trend of food production. Managing the existing stock of knowledge in Agricultural Jihad Organization (AJO), particularly explicit and tacit knowledge which is consistent with regional food security is the key task of managers and experts of AJO. The main argument of this paper was to study food security knowledge management among managers and experts of AJO by using Robertson Model. Using survey method, the study considered food security issue and the importance of livestock, horticulture and farming units. 68 experts were randomly selected from these units. The experts ascertained the face validity of questionnaire and the reliability of the questionnaire could be seen in the computed Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.72. To study tacit knowledge of food security 5 indicators were used and the results implied that 80 percent of respondents scored less than 20 from the maximum of 50. The results indicate from the explicit sources of information the most referred sources of information are books, magazines, reports and organizational research respectively. Dialogue among colleagues, participation in seminars and face to face conversation were among the mostly used forms of communication methods that would raise tacit knowledge. There is a positive and significant relationship between the use of magazines and food security tacit knowledge and between dialogue among colleagues and tacit knowledge. Finally, those who had a managerial position besides being a qualified staff during their employment possessed more food security tacit knowledge.

Most rural development experts only considered economic growth in their definition of development, up to several decades ago. According to this definition, the presence of capital and technology is assumed to be sufficient for development of rural societies. On the other hand, active media including newspapers in rural areas are among important factors contributing to cultural development in these areas. Three factors have the most important role in the level of rural people access to press media: level of literacy, type of occupation, and degree of connection and linkage to city; in this way development ground will be provided in rural areas.