The Effect of Physical and Economic Aspects of Quality of Life on Population Sustainability in Rural Settlements (Case study: Villages of Razaviyeh District, Mashhad County, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran)

The quality of life is a multifaceted and relative concept that is affected by temporal-spatial features and individual and social values, and incorporates objective and external, and subjective and internal dimensions. Therefore, it has different implications for different individuals and groups. Moreover, quality of life meets one of the vital needs of every individual in society and thus, it is of particular importance to examine the governments' tendency toward providing quality of life rural to maintain the population in rural areas in recent decades. This article was an attempt to examine and analyze the effect of physical and economic aspects of quality of life on population sustainability in rural settlements in the studied area. The research was a descriptive-analytical study. The studied geographical region was Razaviyeh District, Mashhad County, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran. The statistical population of the villagers in 12 villages had a population of 2570 and a sample size of 356 rural households, which were determined using the Cochran's formula. Using Cronbach's alpha, the reliability of the questionnaire was about 0.931. Stratified sampling was used to select the sample villages. Desk and field studies (questionnaire) were used to collect data, and structural equation modeling (SEM) and SmartPLS 3 were used for data analysis. The results showed that from the viewpoint of the villagers in the studied region, the physical aspect of the quality of life had more suitable conditions than the economic aspect.