Effective factors to increase rural households' resilience under drought conditions in Iran

Abstract

In recent years, rural-farmer families have encountered a higher level of vulnerability to drought than all other communities in the world including Iran. As well, their vulnerability has been intensified due to the gap in the previous research on resilience and the lack of a comprehensive program for their sustainability in drought conditions. To fill this gap, this research pursued two goals: (i) studying the resilience level of rural-farmer families in drought conditions and (ii) studying the factors underpinning resilience improvement. Given the drought severity in the region, the statistical population consisted of all rural farmers in Kerman province, southeastern Iran. Data were analyzed in the SPSS software package. The main research instrument was a questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by a panel of experts and its reliability was estimated by Cronbach's alpha. Rural households in the study had weak resilience and livelihood assets, and their situation worsened with increasing drought. The results also revealed a negative significant relationship between drought severity and the resilience of rural-farmer families. Furthermore, hierarchical regression analysis revealed that 24 indicators of livelihood assets (financial, social, human, natural, physical) accounted for 84% of the variance in improving rural households' resilience under drought conditions.