The Requirements of Rural Residents for Achieving Sustainable Livelihood (Case Study: Sarfariab District of Charam County)

INTRODUCTIONDevelopment is a multi-dimensional process which is investigated through a variety of perspectives. In many definitions, development includes themes such as the intellectual maturity of rural residents in identifying and solving problems related to themselves and their society. As a result, meeting the essential needs of development with the aim of achieving a better quality of life as well as healthcare is regarded as equal for everyone and it is based on the public participation of people, the orientation of which is determined by themselves with focus on intersectional cooperation. Given the sustainable life approach as a strategy for rural development, it has become a desirable pattern for the empowerment and capacity building in rural regions parallel to changing lifestyle in development theories and it is considered as a significant means to achieve sustainable development.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKLivelihood is considered sustainable when it is capable of resisting against unexpected pressures and damages along with restoring itself without harming natural resources as well as improving its assets and capabilities in the future. Hence, the major topic of LTEC is providing for rural entrepreneurs who are interested in development and present their entrepreneurial theories to the market and attempt to realize them; consequently, rural communities have requirements similar to those of urban societies which need to be addressed and analyzed. In this case, “requirement” is considered as a situation in which the status quo is far from the desired condition. In essential requirements approach, it is attempted to specify an absolute minimum of the required resources aimed at long-term physical welfare. The notion of poverty line is derived from this very idea and includes the amount of income required for meeting the essential needs. This approach is particularly useful in the area of developmental cooperation and indicates what a society needs in order to survive and maintain their existence. Furthermore, it determines the actions that should be taken in order to help the poor reach above the poverty line. The theory of essential requirements does not emphasize on investing in effective economic activities, whereas the sole survival of the society is emphasized exclusively. In this regard, in Maslows’ hierarchy of needs theory, the notion of “fulfillment” is considered synonymous to “fulfilling, providing, and meeting the needs”. Fulfilling the needs involves a set of states such as strength, agility, pleasure, and reward. Following the fulfillment of a single level of requirements, the needs in other levels become important which may dominate one’s behavior until the lowest hierarchy is reached.
METHODOLOGYThe present inquiry is an applied, descriptive-analytical study which is conducted using the survey method as well as questionnaires. The population of the study includes the rural communities in Charam city; according to a 2011 census, there are 81 populated and 21 unpopulated villages which entail more than 8076 people (1966 families). In this study, 10 villages were selected through spot sampling as this method is majorly used for studying the phenomena and features of geographical locations and regions. In these chosen regions, villages have been formed mostly due to the natural geographical environment (such as the type of land, vegetation species, minor climates, the quantity and quality of water, and so on) as well as human phenomena (population, economic activities, etc.). The total population of these 10 villages included more than 1725 families which according to the Cochran formula and 0.5 margin of error, 272 questionnaires were provided and distributed randomly among the people. Accordingly, in order to examine the needs of rural residents in line with sustainable livelihood, simple random sampling was used. Following data collection and their processing in software settings such as SPSS, data were analyzed at the regional level. Additionally, for this investigation, 19 indices and 60 variables were provided for the questionnaire according to the Likert scale; descriptive and inferential statistics was used for analyzing the data. In general, the reliability and validity of all the indices were obtained as 0.852 which denotes the satisfaction and sustainability of the index among the rural areas of the study.
DISCUSSION & CONCLUSIONGiven the significance of livelihood approach in human development activities particularly in underdeveloped areas, the present study was conducted with the purpose of analyzing the needs of rural residents as well as explaining the effective factors in line with achieving sustainable livelihood in Sarfariab region, Charam city. The results of the study showed that through factor analysis of the views given by 272 rural residents, 14 factors were extracted and nominated as the effective factors in rural requirements corresponding to sustainable livelihood. The first factor, rural infrastructural needs (facilities and equipment) was introduced as the most important one involving more than 13% of the whole variance. Factors including the needs for healthcare, housing, passages, rural residents’ credits, income generation and employment, cooperatives, industrial and manufacturing factories, dispute resolution centers and associations, leisure time, sociocultural, technology, sports, business, and environmental education described 4.81, 3.78, 3.36, 2.94, 2.89, 2.80, 2.68, 2.56, 2.43, 2.38, 2.31, and 2.17% of the whole variance for the effective variables on the requirements in line with rural sustainable livelihood, respectively; in total, these factors describe 52.433% of the variance for all variables.