Evaluation of the role of entrepreneurship and economic development in rural areas, case study: Zanjan-Takestan axis villages in Zanjan province

Subject Areas : Regional Planning

Jamshid Einali ¹ (Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran.)

Received: 2023-01-16 Accepted : 2024-02-11 Published : 2024-05-21

Keywords: Zanjan Province, Rural Entrepreneurship, Rural Economy, small businesses,

Abstract :

The purpose of this research is to investigate the role of entrepreneurship in the development of rural economy and its diversification in the villages located on the connecting axis of the Zanjan-Takestan transit road in the political area of Zanjan province. The current research is of an applied type and its descriptive-analytical method is based on data collection by completing a questionnaire. The statistical population of the research is 11 villages located on the Zanjan-Takestan transit road in Zanjan province, which according to the data of the population and housing census (2015) has 7207 households, using the Cochran formula, the number is 365 (65 out of Village managers, 36 cases of entrepreneurs living in the village and 264 cases of ordinary residents) were selected as samples. The validity of the questionnaire items was checked from the point of view of the experts and the reliability of the variables was calculated through Cronbach's alpha coefficient as 834%. One-sample t, two-sample t and regression statistical tests were used to analyze the data. The results showed that rural entrepreneurship has a positive and significant effect on the development of the rural economy. Thus, rural entrepreneurship had the greatest effect on the indicators of "improvement of production and service infrastructure in the village" and "capital formation and increase of investment in the village" with numerical averages of 4.29 and 3.90. In addition, the results of the Levene’s Test for variance equality showed that the significant difference in the views of the two groups (ordinary people and managers) in the index of "capital formation and investment in the village" at the level of 95% and in the index of "increasing risk acceptance" in The level of 90% was significant. Also, the regression fitting model with the coefficient of determination (0.882) showed the positive effect of rural entrepreneurship on "diversity of employment and income opportunities in the village". So that, the indicators of investment in the village, improvement of production infrastructure, access to technology, and increase in the risk acceptance are respectively 0.374, 0.348, 0.302 and 0.213 were effective in "diversity of employment and income opportunities".
 
Extended Abstract
                                                                                                                                
Introduction
Today, most governments in developing countries have come to the understanding that no development will be sustainable without considering rural communities and their accompaniment (Kvasha et al., 2017; Shcherbak et al., 2020; Yurui et al., 2021). Because, if properly planned, rural areas offer unique non-agricultural opportunities for employment and income sources for development (Heo & Kim, 2016). Nevertheless, rural areas economically face major challenges such as the migration of young people to urban areas, older age structure and limited access to financial capital (Deller et al., 2019; Kusio et al., 2022), insufficiency Infrastructures and market and commercial networks and communication isolation (Okeke & Nwankwo, 2017; Kusio et al., 2022) inappropriate management of production resources, low level of productivity of production factors, lack of capital formation and its exit, growth They face technological weakness, infrastructural inadequacies, weak technical knowledge and the like (Ćurčić et al., 2021; Castanho et al., 2021b). With the inadequacy of past approaches such as the industrialization of rural areas and the development of employment based on the service sector, some rural development experts paid attention to the need to pay attention to entrepreneurship as an influential factor and a powerful catalyst in the sustainable economic growth and development of rural areas (Santos. et al., 2021; Wang, 2022).
 
Methodology
 This research is an applied research and has been done by descriptive-analytical method. A questionnaire was used to collect data and information. To determine the face validity of the questionnaire questions, first for each of the research indices, the 5-point Likert scale (fully agree (5), agree (4), no comment (3), disagree (2), and completely disagree (Score 1)), then provided to a number of geography and rural planning experts. Pre-test method was used to measure the reliability of the items. Quantitative method and one sample t-test, Independent Two Sample Mean Test and regression were used for data analysis. The statistical population of the research is the villages located on the connecting axis of the Zanjan-Takestan transit road in the political area of Zanjan province, which includes 11 villages that have been fully investigated. The sample villages in 2016 had a population of 22,950 people and 7,207 households (Management and Planning Organization of Zanjan Province, 2016), and using Cochran's formula, assuming p=0.7 and q=0.3, 365 cases were selected as samples. Out of the number of selected samples, 65 cases were among the village officials (members of the Islamic Council and village council), 36 cases were entrepreneurs (managers and business owners living in the village) and 264 cases were selected from the residents of the sample villages for study.
 
Results and Discussion
In this research, by examining the theoretical foundations and localization of the desired indicators, the desired components of the researchers in the form of the impact of entrepreneurial activities in the development of the rural economy, as described in 5 categories "improvement of production and service infrastructure at the village level", "Access to new knowledge and technology", "Job and income opportunities (job diversity and income diversity)", "Capital formation and investment in the village (agricultural activities, non-agricultural activities and increasing the value of assets) and "increasing the risk acceptance of entrepreneurial activities" have been examined.
The results of the one sample t test analysis showed that the numerical mean for the economic development indicators in all cases was higher than the numerical desirability value of the test item (5-scale Likert mean = 3) and the significance of the difference in the rural economic development indicators was affected by Entrepreneurial activities are at the level of 99% and all indicators show a positive impact. In addition, the most effective development of entrepreneurial activities and non-agricultural businesses in the indices of "improvement of production and service infrastructure in the village" and "capital formation and increase of investment in the village" respectively with numerical average 4.29 and 3.90, and on the other hand, improvement and index of access to new knowledge and technology in production with a numerical average of 3.55 have had the least effect among the investigated indicators of rural economy.
Examining the existing differences from the point of view of two groups of respondents (village residents and village officials and managers of entrepreneurial units) using the two-sample t-test according to the values of equal variance of Loans showed that the indicators of "job opportunities and income", "access to new knowledge and technology for production" and "improvement of production and service infrastructure" have no significant difference.
The results of the multiple regression analysis showed that rural entrepreneurship had a positive effect of 0.882 points on the diversity of employment and income opportunities in the villages from the perspective of the respondents to the research questions in the studied villages. The results of ß values showed that one unit of change in the standard deviation of rural economy indicators affected by rural entrepreneurship (capital formation and investment in the village, improvement of production and service infrastructure, access to new knowledge and technology, and increasing power) Accepting the risk of entrepreneurial activities) will be effective at the rate of 0.374, 0.348, 0.302 and 0.213 respectively in the "diversity of employment and income opportunities" in the sample villages from the point of view of the respondents.
 
Conclusion
The results obtained from the analysis of the questionnaire data showed that the formation and development of entrepreneurial activities in the studied villages has contributed effectively to the development of the indicators of the village economy in the studied area. So, the greatest effect can be seen in the indicators of "improvement of production and service infrastructure in the village" and "capital formation and increase of investment in the village". In addition, from the point of view of two groups of respondents to the research questions (village residents and village officials and managers of entrepreneurial units) in the indicators of "employment and income opportunities", "access to new knowledge and technology for production" and "improvement" "Production and service infrastructure" has no significant difference between the two groups. In addition, the development of rural entrepreneurial activities has a positive and significant effect at the level of 99% on the index of "diversity of employment and income opportunities in the village". Based on the results of the analysis of the findings, the following suggestions can be made in line with the development of the rural economy with an emphasis on non-agricultural entrepreneurship according to the geographical characteristics of the studied area:

Facilitating local and out-of-region investment in the direction of the development of units based on transformation industries in the agricultural sector in the form of small industrial clusters and the possibility of establishing them in industrial towns, considering that they have industrial infrastructure.
The possibility of developing entrepreneurial units in the form of joint investment and share sharing due to the predominance of horticultural economy and the variety of horticultural products in the region.
Helping the local community in the management and development of tourism, especially agricultural and farm tourism, through providing technical advice and collaborative provision of infrastructure.
Planning for the development of technical knowledge, especially in topics such as processing and packaging of local products and their marketing.

 
 

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