Economy

The concept of quality of life has been emerged in theoretical literature and press in early 1960s, it has turned to be one of the interested issues in social science and in recent years, it has been a base for modern differentiation and classification of countries. Improving quality of life in a special place or for special people or groups is always the focusing concern to plan makers. Improving quality of life could be followed by other dimensions of development such as social, economic and physical ones. In this way, rural areas need some studies related to quality of life. These studies should include related aspects to quality of life in the village, reduction of geographical exclusion and accessibility to basic needs of life. Moreover, the results of studies on quality of life could be helpful in assessment of policies, ranking the locations, codification of management strategies and urban and rural planning which can facilitate understanding and prioritization of socio-economic issues for plan makers and managers to improve people's quality of life. Considering that urban growth and urbanization are the most obvious social, economic changes in recent times, urbanization rapidly spread so that this phenomenon has limited most of the opportunities which can improve quality of life for the villages. However, in many rural areas in Iran, despite of different changes in case of improving quality of life, we are still far from the ideal situation. This condition is more obvious in the areas that most of the population lives in the villages; Jiroft County located in Kerman Province is an example. Therefore, this study aims to assess factors affecting quality of life in villages located in Jiroft.

According to its aim, this study is a practical one and regarding its data collection method, it is a survey which uses questionnaires as the tool of data collection; The face validity is confirmed by faculty members in Yasouj University and Shiraz University; to examine its validity, Pilot study is conducted as the pre-test outside the study population, on the residents in Ali-Abad village, Jiroft; Calculation of Cronbach's alfa for different factors (from 0.71 to 0.89) is estimated that suggests the reliability of this assessment tool. In this study, the unit of analysis includes the householder. Furthermore, according to government census, the population was 4243 households among them 350 households have been chosen using Krejcie & Morgan random sampling table as the population of this study; samples have been chosen according to each village population and geographical region according to the classes. Data analysis was performed using SPSS.

This study is the assessment of each factors of quality of life in studied villages from householders' point of view. According to the obtained average value of 2.75, analytical results in the case of social factor are assessed which is under the average. According to the obtained average value of 3.43, in the case of social security, the studied households' condition has been estimated more than the average and findings related to average comparison in this factor shows that Delfard village has the worst condition and Sarbijan village has the best condition. According to the average value of 0.74 in the case of housing factor, the housing status in the studied villages was estimated more than the average. The results of average comparison showed that Halil village is on the highest level and Esfandegheh village is on the lowest level in the case of average factor. According to the average value of 20.38 which is related to the third group that means most of the studied population, income factor showed that most of studied population have average income and among them, comparing other studied villages, residents of Khaton-abad village have the highest level in the case of average income and it is different from other studied villages. Next factor is wealth which is assessed by five subset. According to the average value of 0.41 in this factor, it can be said that the level of wealth in studied villages is lower than average level and among them, Delfard and Ganj-abad villages are at the lowest level and Esfandegheh and Sarbijan villages are at the highest level. Next factor is per capita household expenditure on clothing; the result of analyzing this factor shows that given the frequency of 192 people (54.9%), per capita expenditure on clothing for each person is between 200 to 300 hundred Tomans in a year and comparing to other villages, Delfard village has a better condition regarding the average level of this factor. The results in the nutrition factor shows that villages located in this region are divided to four grades regarding the average calories intake per gram in food by households. Among them, Delfard village is completely different from other villages and in terms of calories amount that its residents consume, this village has a better condition. The last studied factor is people's satisfaction of objective dimensions of quality of life. According to the obtained average value of 3.15 which is higher than theoretical average (number 3), considering this factor, the status of studied households is assessed higher than the average level. The results of average comparison in this factor show that all the villages are divided to four classes regarding the average value of the considered factor. Among them Dolat-abad and Ganj-abad villages have the worst and Esfandegheh and Delfard villages have the best condition.

Rural areas face various challenges in Iran; one of the most important challenges isb economic weakness. Since entrepreneurship can remove many major challenges (such as unemployment, low level of income, lack of economic diversification) in rural areas and it can affect other aspects of rural life positively, entrepreneurship and job creation are the most important plans and strategies for rural improvement to resolve economic challenges. Entrepreneurship in village leads to job creation, increase in income, wealth creation, improvement of quality of life and it is also helpful for local people participating in economic activities. The agriculture section in most third world countries cannot provide enough job opportunities and income to meet the needs of rural areas with high population density as a result of low level of productivity of land and labor, so non-farm entrepreneurship is considered as the suitable strategy to improve job creation and increase rural income. Promoting diversification of economic activities in rural areas especially in non-farm section leads to a profound impact on the creation of entrepreneurial thinking in rural areas; Since for landless people or those who own a small size of land, earning farming income and this amount of income does not meet their needs, non-farm entrepreneurship and as a result diversification of non-farm economy (or related to farm economy) can create job and income for them. Undoubtedly, job creation in non-farm section prevents labor force as the major economic capital from exiting the villages which is the main reason of rural-to-urban migration growth and many socio-economic problems. Based on this fact, this study aims to analyze the importance of non-farm entrepreneurshipb in improving the quality of life in villages of Shandiz area and also to determine that in which dimensions and aspects of rural life considered by entrepreneurs in their plans, the farm based entrepreneurship activities have the most impacts. The research questions include "how much farm based entrepreneurship activities could improve the quality of life in the villages in economic, social and environmental dimensions?" and "in which dimensions do entrepreneurship activities have the most impacts?"

According to its aim, this is a practical and developmental study and regarding its methodology it is descriptive-analytic one. For theoretical modeling, descriptive and documentary methods have been used by reviewing theoretical literature related to rural development, quality of life, entrepreneurship and non-farm entrepreneurship studies. So, the criteria and indicators have been chosen according to theoretical frameworks and works done by other researches and also on the basis of its aim. The analytic unit in this study is the non-farmer householder who participates in creative non-farming activities in studied villages. Residents of villages in Shandiz area, Binaloud County, including Shandiz and Abardeh villages with population of 19667 in 1390 are the study population. According to the conducted field study, among 18 villages which their populations are more than 20 households, 6 villages with the population of 13217 are considered as study samples and in these villages non-farm entrepreneurship activities have been done more than other villages. To study the impacts of non-farm entrepreneurship activities in the studied area, samples should be chosen according to the number of households in the region; regarding the total number of households, sample households in the sample villages are 3776 households and as a result, according to Cochran Formula (using 0.06 margin of error) 249 households have been chosen to complete the questionnaires regarding the householder's point of view. The first level of sample selection among householders in the studied area is according to an analogy between villages and the second level is random selection. Eventually, information extracted from the questionnaires has been analyzed using statistical methods (Pearson, Spearman and Chi-square correlation tests to the case with independent group and step by step regression analysis) performed in SPSS.

It was found that, non-farm activities have various impacts on economic, social and environmental dimensions. Chi-square test to the case with independent group was performed to analyze villager's point of view regarding non-farm entrepreneurship activities; for most indicators, a meaningful level of significance less than 0.05 and the relationship has been proven. For assessment of economic impacts of entrepreneurship on quality of life, indicators such as income, employment status and economic justice have been used. The relative distribution for answering question suggests that the average value of economic changes is 3.46. This average is defined in the range from 1 to 5 and it shows that the economic status is higher than the average level. For assessment of social impacts, indicators such as social capital, social participation, population stability, satisfaction of access and personal welfare have been used. The average of social changes is 3.06 and it shows that social status is higher than the average level. The average value of environmental changes is 3.38 and it shows that the environmental status is higher than the average level. It has to be mentioned that for assessment of non-farm entrepreneurship activities, some indicators have been used including good job opportunities, government investment, product quality, education, availability and changeability of land use. The average value of non-farm entrepreneurship activities is 3.41 which show this status is higher than the average. In conclusion, it can be said that non-farm entrepreneurship activities improve the quality of life in economic, social and environmental dimensions.

The quality of individual life of each person depends on external objective factors of his life and his mental and internal perceptions of it. Improving the quality of life in a particular place or for specific individuals and groups is one of those issues that have always been focused by planners. Improving the quality of life is an important issue that was firstly noted by scholars through widespread development of technology and the process of industrialization in Western countries. According to scientific studies, the connection of economic development and life quality is not a linear one. Rather, these two will be remained aligned just as long as the minimum of favorable material conditions will be provided for human life. Otherwise, we cannot expect that eliminating economic needs help improve the quality of life. Since human beings are multifaceted and complex, economic logic cannot explain lots of their behaviors. Noting the importance of life quality and humanitarian issues of South East geographical environment, in this study, we have tried to investigate economic and physical aspects of rural areas in Chabahar, as well as analyzing the quality of rural life there.

The present study has been conducted using documents and field studies .Information required for field studies have been collected through the questionnaires. Then the data obtained have been processed using the indicators of descriptive and inferential statistics in SPSS software. Statistical population of the research consists of the villagers inhabited in the villages of Chabahar County. Required samples for the research have been selected by multistage cluster sampling method. The selected sample size has been a number of 350 people as the head of the households. The number of sample villages and households in each village was selected based on the proportional allocation of the number of inhabited villages in each district.

Discussion and conclusion
Given the importance of strategic, geopolitical and geo-economic region of South East Iran and because of the great tendency of most inhabitants of this region to rural life, in this study, we have tried to examine some of the most important economic and structural indicators of rural areas in Chabahar County in order to help policy and planning systems and analyze the quality of life in rural area of Chabahar, the Province of Sistan and Baluchestan. Final results indicate lack of villagers' satisfaction with the quality of their lives in the studied area. Because, based on economic indicators, the coefficient for the enjoyment of income, subsistence, annual savings and employment situation in the village is in an unfavorable condition. The quality of infrastructures, electriCounty, telephone, radio and television coverage are in good conditions but some other indicators like access to communication routes, public transport, safe drinking water, fuel-distribution and access to financial services and credits do not have any acceptable condition.
In terms of residential environment quality, the residential unit was perfect only in terms of size and infrastructure while there was no favorable condition for other features like its resistance against natural disasters, use of resistant materials, the beauty of shape and form, separation of the whereabouts of animals, methods of collecting waste, landfill sites and sewage networks. The following suggestions, derived from management and research experiences, are recommended to upgrade the quality of rural life in Chabahar area.
Since agriculture has a dominant economic role in this region and because of the fact that the development in this area requires developing of ancillary services, it is essential to establish agricultural machinery repair centers, veterinary centers, and banking services in each rural district.
- Motivating people to progress, and making them hopeful of a bright future in the village through the creation of new business opportunities in the field of agro-based industries, tourism, and development of processing industry;
- Take necessary measures to create dynamic and sustainable financial resources, especially for small farmers, in order to expand the coverage of special insurance to protect villagers' lives and their property.
- Trying to develop rural social welfare institutions by transferring of these activities to rural municipalities and focusing on the activities of all institutions and rganizations that are responsible for welfare services to the villagers;
- Strengthening infrastructural facilities and equipment including water, electriCounty, telecommunication and communication offices.
- Increasing the number of cooperative stores and fuel stations by public participation and technical and financial support of the government through the relevant agencies.