International Journal of Economics, Commerce and Management United Kingdom Vol. II, Issue 9, Sep 2014 http://ijecm.co.uk/ ISSN 2348 0386 MULTI-CRITERIA ANALYSIS FOR MEASURING SUSTAINABILITY OF RURAL AREAS OF ISFAHAN PROVINCE, IRAN Hedayati-Moghadam, Zahra Dept. of Geographical Sciences and Planning, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
[email protected] Seidayi, Sayed Eskandar University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran Nouri, Hedayatollah University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran Abstract Measuring sustainability of the rural areas of a region to identify their present status and also to recognize the differences between the different areas in terms of sustainability indices is an important issue in the process of making decision for their sustainable development. This concept is adopted in evaluating of the rural areas of Falavarjan County in Isfahan province through assessing the effective dimensions and indices of the region and analyzing the assumption whether there is a significant difference in the level of sustainability in different areas of the region. For sustainability assessment, economic, social, environmental, physical and accessibility dimensions are applied in a descriptive and analytic study method with the assistance of TOPSIS model. The statistical sample consists of 47 villages and 378 households. Results show that there is no uniformity in the level of sustainability in the region, and in each of the dimensions under study there are differences between the areas. Keywords: Rural development, Sustainability Measurement, Indicators, Multi-criteria, Isfahan province, Iran Licensed under Creative Common Page 1 © Hedayati-Moghadam, Seidayi & Nouri INTRODUCTION Sustainable development, in recent years has become an international issue and many institutions try to adopt it as a strategy in facing challenges like population growth, environmental destruction, restrictions of natural resources, socio-economic inequities, unemployment, poverty and differences in social stratum (Sarafi, 2000).