Why Do They Want to Migrate from Rural Areas? A Psychological Perspective from Iran

Masoud Yazdanpanah and Tahereh Zobeidi

International Journal of Agricultural Management and Development (IJAMAD), 2017, vol. 07, issue 3

Abstract: While migration is a basic element of population dynamics in most societies, in Iran, rural-urban migration is a particular concern of both social scientists and policy makers. Rural- urban migration accounts for over half of the growth of most Iranian cities. On the other hand, this movement is often cited as having negative effects on rural area, including a shortage of supply of agricultural labor. It is becoming common to blame rural-urban migration among young people on factors such as education and employment opportunities. This research examines the psychological factors influencing the intentions and decisions of rural young people aiming to migrate to Khuzestan Province. This study used the extend theory of planned behaviour. A questionnaire was developed using the latent variables of attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, behavioural intention, community satisfaction, and youth personal characteristics. The face and content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by a panel of experts. The questionnaire’s internal reliability was investigated using the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. All scales indicated a good-toexcellent reliability index (0.75–0.85). Samples of young people were identified through a multi-stage, stratified random sampling strategy from two groups (young people who are ‘well educated’ and those who were not). A total of 163 valid questionnaires were analyzed. Our results showed that adding community satisfaction as additional construct to the original theory of planned behavior could significantly increase the explanatory power of the basic model. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that attitude, perceived behaviour control, as well as community satisfaction can predict 51.3% of variances in migration intentions.

Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban; Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/292492/files/I ... _Pages%20283-292.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:ijamad:292492

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.292492

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Agricultural Management and Development (IJAMAD) from Iranian Association of Agricultural Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().