A Methodology for Development of Cultural-Social Assessment of Economic Plans

One of the issues often relevant in implementation of economic plans is their social and cultural impacts. Over the past few decades, assessment of social impacts of development plans have been seriously put on the agenda in the world, but assessment of cultural impacts are still in their embryonic stages. The present paper is an attempt to introduce the process of cultural assessment through library study, interview and brainstorm among experts, scholars and executives. Thus, through designing and proposing indigenous cultural-social indexes, the grounds will be prepared for calculation, weighing and estimation of cultural-social impacts of each plan, and, in the next step, through introduction of a statistical method for integration of results of the report of economic feasibility and level of estimation of cultural and social requirements of plans, an operational method will be introduced for cultural-social assessment. The findings of this study indicate that some of the economic projects which are economically feasible are not socially and culturally feasible and vise versa.