Investigating the effect of livelihood assets on diversity of villagers' livelihoods (the case of Bavi County)

One of the main challenges of rural development during recent decades is the issue of people's livelihoods instability, which leads to undesirable socioeconomic impacts. Thus, the most crucial and effective means for promoting development goals in rural areas is to identify the households’ livelihoods status, the extent they have access to livelihood assets and the factors affecting that. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impacts of rural livelihood assets on their livelihoods diversity. In line with this, a survey method was used to collect data. The statistical population of interest composed of 6670 rural households living in rural areas of Bavi County. A sample of 260 persons as the head of rural households, based on Kerjcie and Morgan table, was selected using cluster random sampling. A questionnaire was designed to collect data. The questionnaire’s validity was confirmed based on the opinion of a panel of faculty members and experts. To ensure its reliability, a pilot study was conducted on a sample outside the scope of the study, and the calculated alpha coefficients showed an acceptable value for the research variables. Data was analyzed using Excel2013 and SPSS20 software.The results showed that the livelihoods diversity in Bavi’s rural areas was low and not desirable. The rural situations based on their livelihood assets’ prosperities were different; the housholds with a diversified income source had a better situation regarding all livelihood assets than those who had not. Also, the results of regression model estimation represented that livelihood assets variables together with other variables of non-agricultural work experience, agricultural work experience and age accounted for 32.4% of variations in dependent variable of livelihood diversity.