بررسي عوامل فرهنگي-اجتماعي موثر در عدم يكپارچگي اراضي كشاورزي-نمونه موردي: دهستان پشت دربند

Examining the effective socio-cultural barriers of farmland consolidation in Kermanshah

This paper deals with the effective socio-cultural barriers of farmland consolidation in rural areas of Kermanshah. The scale of analysis is Dehestan, a general-purpose spatial unit of the official and political division in Iran, which is three levels below the Province. The region selected for the present study is Posht Darband Dehestan located at the eastern longitudes of 46"45ʹ27" to 47"14ʹ56" and northern latitudes of 34"33ʹ58" to 34"47ʹ58" in Kermanshah province. Land consolidation is considered as an important part of land reform process in which the spatial structure of farmland will be changed via improving the relevant management system of in question farmlands. The entire process will accelerate the change of rural areas structure. Despite the necessity of farmland consolidation in rural areas of developing countries, there are many serious socio-cultural barriers to gain the target. As some researchers have mentioned, these barriers are various and beyond the coverage of a single study. This study, therefore, is confined to examining only five hypotheses related to the topic of the present study namely: marriage (i.e, trousseau and dowry), endowment, inheritance, population growth, and literacy. The statistical sample includes 107 farmers who were selected based on a multi-stage or cluster sampling method. For data collection two methods of documentary and field study are used and combined. These data consist: per capita land owning, per capita reduction index of land owning between two generations, literacy rate, population growth, the impact of endowment, inheritance and marriage. To examine the hypotheses indices, then, the Spearman and Pearson methods of Correlation Coefficient were applied to show the relations between variables. In conclusion, the findings of this paper indicate a significant relationship between per capita reduction of land with three under investigation factors: population growth, inheritance and literacy rates. However, marriage and endowment factors didnʹt show a significant relation with the per capita reduction index of land owning. Based on Regression analysis applied to significant variables, it was confirmed that main effective socio-cultural barriers on farmland consolidatiou in study area were: inheritance, population growth, and literacy.