Identification and Ranking of Barriers to Sustainable Development in Iran

This paper tried to test independence or dependence of sustainable development by evaluating the relationship or lack of significant relationship between the considered independent variables. Another objective of this paper is to determine and rank barriers to sustainable development. In both cases, this paper finds its target. Kolmogorov Smirnov test showed that according to the amount of significance of variables, the assumption for sample normal distribution is not rejected. Pearson correlation coefficient test showed that the absolute value of correlation coefficient of subsidiary hypotheses are respectively 0.158695, 0.088511, 0.126509, 0.097899, 0.127403, 0.03755, 0.173447, 0.105498, 0.084488, and the Sig statistic for all variables equals to or is smaller than 0.003. These calculations indicate that there is a significant direct relationship between defined independent variables in this study and meta-cognitive strategies and the Sig statistics for all variables in the studied statistical population equals to or is smaller than 0.003. Analysis and study of the computational results of the new and advanced methods of partial least squares for structural equation (VPLS) showed that the t-student estimated for each of the model coefficients was more than 95% and it can be concluded that the research hypotheses with calculated coefficients are confirmed. Also the coefficient of determination was calculated as (R = 0.892), which indicates that approximately 89%, variations of the dependent variable (sustainable development) are explained and described with objectives of progress and efficacy in this study. This paper also showed that per one unit increase in the barriers, how much sustainable development reduces