Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
PhD Student in Agricultural Extension and Education, Ilam Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ilam, Iran.
2
Professor, Department of Agricultural Extension and Education, Ilam Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ilam, Iran.
3
Associate Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics, Karaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran.
4
Assistant Professor, Department of Agricultural Extension and Education, Ilam Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ilam, Iran.
Abstract
Introduction
The village is the oldest form of human settlements and rural living is one of the oldest ways of social life. Paying attention to the village and rural dwellers has a high importance and a special place in the world. Rural development has always been one of the main components and elements of national development. Development is not just an economic phenomenon and many societies need to plan and identify their actual and potential facilities and resources in order to strengthen the foundations of development when also they need to correct and adjust the imbalances and multitude of economic, social and cultural issues and problems. The lack of a comprehensive evaluation based on scientific methods of the degree of development and its level of imbalance in different levels of cities and villages is one of the main obstacles in identifying priorities and formulating provincial development plans. For this purpose, paying attention to the approaches of regional balance and regional policy making and planning to reduce existing heterogeneity and inequalities requires studying and recognizing the importance of the characteristics of each region with regard to its position in the entire regional system. The current study is conducted to determine the development rate in rural districts of Lorestan province as well as to rank them using the VIKOR and TOPSIS analysis method.
Material and Methods
Multi-instrument decision-making techniques are suitable for ranking in a set of existing indicators with respect to multi-dimensional and multi-contradictory features. In Iran, the statistical analysis of the provinces has been published by the Iranian Statistics Center, and the selected indicators play an important role in the development of the regions. In this research, like other studies conducted in the field of evaluating the development levels of villages and rural areas, in order to formulate a regular and logical framework of indicators that express the characteristics of rural development in the study area, based on global experiences, the literature on the subject, and the review of available information from referring to the statistical yearbook of villages of Lorestan province, 110 key and effective indicators in the field of rural development were selected for Lorestan province. The selected indicators are classified in eight different educational, demographic, infrastructural, economic, health and treatment, cultural services, welfare and functional agricultural sectors. After identifying and selecting the indicators, determined the degree of development of the villages of Lorestan province and rank them based on the level of development were carried out. This did using multi-indicator decision-making techniques (VIKOR and TOPSIS), which are among the best statistical models and calculations in the field of measurement and ranking.
Results and Discussion
The results show a heterogeneous distribution of facilities and services among rural districts of this province, with Shirvan as a developed region ranked in the first place. In addition, Bazvand and Goudarzi as the second and third place, are developing regions respectively, while other rural districts are considered deprived and relatively deprived regions. Moreover, GolGol, West Kargah, Roumiani, Zhan, Shirvan, Azna, ChalanChulan, and Chamsangar rural districts are ranked in first place in educational, demographic, infrastructure, economic, health service, cultural, welfare, and agricultural indicators respectively. In other words, based on the results of the present research, it can be stated that the rural areas of Lorestan province have an unbalanced distribution in terms of development indicators. So that Shirvan district has all the development indicators (educational, population, infrastructure, economic, health and treatment, service, cultural, welfare and agricultural performance) at a favorable level and therefore it is considered developed. In the same way, the development indicators in Bazund and Guderzi villages are improving and for this reason they are at the developing level. Meanwhile, a small amount of development indicators have been distributed in Rumiani, Silakhor, West Kargah, Durood, North Mirbeg, West Pachelek, Chalancholan, East Japleq, East Silakhor, Yusufvand, Heshmatabad, Mozafari and Zhan villages. For this reason, they are among relatively deprived villages. In total, based on the findings, 70 sub-districts of Lorestan province also lack development indicators and are evaluated as deprived of development.
Conclusion
Based on current research findings, it can be applied by policy makers, planners and relevant managers to improve rural development management and policy-making in order to achieve sustainable development.
Keywords
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