Analysis of Identifying "Good Village" Criteria from the Perspective of Rural Experts and Managers in Bonab County

Extended Abstract
1. INTRODUCTION
Human settlement in favorable living spaces, or Utopia, has long been a concern. However, in the real world, residence on the planet requires other regularities. The Good village or Healthy Village arises under the influence of Utopianism and ideal settlement ideas. On one hand, the uncontrolled development of cities, poor living conditions, degrading conditions of health and housing, dirty and stinking alleys and streets, inappropriate and unsanitary streets, general inability to solve these problems, and evacuation of villages, on the other hand, have attracted the attention of many people, thinkers and western scholars. These conditions led to many western scholars and experts' thinking about the social and economic characteristics and optimum size of settlements and other characteristics of them, or even to follow the implementation of these ideas. Accordingly, the present study aims to identify the criteria and indicators that have the greatest impact on a settlement as "Good Village" from the experts and managers' standpoints in the study area.
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The concept of "good" focuses more on values and ethics, and is related to the history of the community, individual and family characteristics and social awareness of the people. Normally, different people according too various biological, cultural, social and individual perceptions and features have various perceptions and reasons about the concept of good. Throughout the history of the world, Utopianism thinking has been the most important intellectual effort of thinkers in providing the best conditions for sustainable settlements to human. In this study, the "good village" means favorable settlements from the rural experts and managers standpoints; i.e., a village which is defined with words such as "developed" or "Advanced", and is the right environment for modern rural human settlement. Thus, the "Good Village" is such an area which is known as “Good” due to the vision, ideals, norms, standards, requirements, common demands and preferences of the majority of its inhabitants.
3. METHODOLOGY
The methodology of this study in terms of its aim, is practical, in terms of the method is experimental, and part of it is analytical-descriptive. Part of the data was obtained through field studies and questionnaires and interviews, and the other part of required data, such as theoretical-conceptual framework, census, and documents, was obtained through library method. For evaluation of the opinion of experts in Bonab, Iran, regarding to assess the competence level of city’s villages as a “Good Village”, the viewpoints of 30 people (15 rural managers and 15 experts from the related offices and institutions) were used. These data were obtained through visiting the relevant organizations and institutions, and completion of questionnaires by the experts. After gathering data, in order to assess the opinions of experts and city officials of BONAB, in terms of testing villages of the city having the characteristics of a "Good Village", paired comparisons, product hierarchy, linear and inconsistencies were calculated using the Expert Choice software and an analytic hierarchy process. For comparative analysis between rural managers and experts from public and private organizations, two-sample t-test was conducted with the use of SPSS software.
4. DISCUSSION
In an overall assessment, it can be said that according to the experts and village managers, among the indices of “Good Village”, the economic dimension has the highest rating by a factor of 0.394, and environmental index by a factor of 0.076 is the lowest one. Hence, it can be said that for the village in the city as "Good Village" proposed, the most important measure is the economic criterion. In comparison with rural managers and the experts, no difference in opinions with regard to the priority of economic indicators was seen, and it can be said both groups have priority to economic conditions. After arriving to the conclusion indicating which dimensions the rural areas of the city are closest to the characteristics of a "Good Village", using t-test two-sample, the rural managers, and experts’ opinions were compared with each other. The result showed that, the differences were significant after controlling for pre-test scores of Leuven in the economic, cultural, and environmental management dimensions (first hypothesis = Sig < 0.05); i.e., in relation to the priority level of the indices, there is a significant difference between the two groups of experts’ opinions, however, no significant difference was observed between them in terms of the other indicators.
5. CONCLUSION
This study aimed to use the viewpoints of rural experts in a part of the country (Bonab) to investigate 36 indicators of identifying a “Good Village” in the form of six overall measures of economic, social, cultural, administrative, physical and environmental assessments. Based on data from surveys of experts and rural managers, among the criteria for identifying good village, the most important factor is economic indicator by 34.5%, and the lowest coefficient of importance is environmental indicator by 7.6%. Thus, the first hypothesis is confirmed. Using Two-sample t-test based on the analysis of variance, it was observed that of the six criteria, lack of equality of variances is confirmed in the economic, cultural, physical and environmental criteria meaning that there is a significant difference between experts and managers opinions in identifying the criteria for a settlement to be a “Good Village”; thus, the second hypothesis is confirmed.