Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Mostefa Abiyat ¹
• Hamid Barghi ²
• Yousef Ghanbari ³

¹ PhD in Geography and Rural Planning, Department of Human Geography, Faculty of Geographical Sciences and Planning, Isfahan University, Isfahan, Iran

² Professor, Department of Human Geography, Faculty of Geographical Sciences and Planning, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

³ Associate Professor, Department of Human Geography, Faculty of Geographical Sciences and Planning, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

The present study analyzed the position of rural good governance based on the spatial planning and policy-making documents of Khuzestan province. To achieve its objective, regional documents relevant to the research topic in the province were analyzed through data mining, resulting in 340 variables grouped into eight main categories explaining the principles of rural good governance in the province. In line with the research questions, a panel of 35 experts from seven organizations in the Khuzestan province was assembled to respond to the questionnaire. To know the status of rural good governance categories in the province, the results of the final coefficients of the categories obtained from the average weights of a set of weighting methods of multi-criteria decision-making showed that the categories of legality, efficiency and effectiveness, justice and participation gained the largest share in rural good governance in Khuzestan province. To determine the level of rural good governance, the results of the methods of coefficients aggregation of FMCDM showed that Ahvaz, Dezful, and Behbahan counties had the best status, and the three counties of Ramshir, Haftgel, and Seydon got the lowest position among all the counties. Also, to analyze the relationships between the principles of rural good governance in the province, the results of the Kendall tau-b and Spearman correlation tests indicated that all the relationships between these principles were significant and positive, and the intensity of the correlation value was evaluated as strong. In this analysis, the highest correlation coefficients were identified in the communication circles between the three categories of transparency, legality, and efficiency and effectiveness, and the lowest coefficients compared to other circles were obtained in the relationships of consensus with some categories. This highlights the challenge of collective agreement and consensus in the realization of rural good governance in Khuzestan province.

Keywords

• Rural Good Governance
• Spatial Planning and Policy-Making
• Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods
• Correlation Tests
• Khuzestan Province

Main Subjects

• Rural Planning