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Purpose- In addition to preservation of and getting religious and legal rights of the government and people, one of the most important goals of ownership and consolidation of national and government domains is to keep and develop renewable natural resources and to allocate them for development of agricultural and productive activities. The ultimate goal of the legislator, has been movement towards comprehensive agricultural self-sufficiency, deprivation reduction, and development in villages. The present study aims at investigating the effect of national land resource allocation on rural sustainable development. As a result, the rural districts of Northern and Southern Bar’an, as a part of the central province of Isfahan, were selected. Design/methodology/approach- The present study is applied in terms of aims, descriptive-analytical in terms of research method, and survey study in terms of data collection. Data collection was performed through library and field studies. The population of the research consisted of farmers of five villages of the Northern Bar’an rural district and five villages of the Southern Bar’an rural district and 30 experts. A sample 260 farmers were selected using Cochran formula. Findings- The results indicated that the effectiveness of the allocation of national and government lands on the dimensions of rural sustainable development is at a moderate level. It shows poor efficiency of allocation of national and public land resources. Research limitations / implications- Problems like farmers' reluctance to cooperate and questionnaire distribution were among the challenges faced in this research. Originality/value: Given the importance of the studied region in production and agricultural, the findings of the present study can be regarded a big step in exploiting the potentiality of this region to determine strategies for sustainable rural development.

Purpose- The importance of non-governmental organizations in underdeveloped or developing countries such as Iran is more than anything due to the ability of such organizations in advancing culture in the most basic sectors of society. The purpose of this research is to analyze the role of non-governmental organizations in Golestan province in achieving sustainable rural development. Design/methodology/approach- This research is descriptive-correlative. The experts of consulting firms of Golestan province constituted the statistical population (n=706) of whom 249 were selected as the sample using stratified random sampling method. The validity of the research instrument was evaluated by faculty members and experts. The pre-test and questionnaire validation were conducted by giving the questionnaires to 30 subjects other than the statistical sample. A Cronbach's alpha of 0.88 was calculated for the reliability coefficient. Finding- According to the results, collective performance of tasks, the use of information and communication technology in providing services, the promotion of skills in producers and beneficiaries of the agricultural sector, improvement of agricultural knowledge in producers and beneficiaries, agricultural technical-vocational training, teaching of management skills and administration of entrepreneurial business along with group dynamics were the major roles of non-governmental organizations in achieving sustainable rural development. The results showed that the communicative and economic knowledge factor and economy with a specific value of 6.86 had the highest power in explaining variables, followed by the educational-promotional factor with a specific value of 6.38 and the social-facilitating factor with a specific value of 5.97. In total, about 65.2% of the total variance was explained. Practical implications- In order to achieve sustainable rural development, it is suggested that non-governmental organizations play their roles in raising income and improving the living standards of farmers, accessing resources and facilities for providing services, diversifying agricultural and agricultural activities, reducing costs and establishing contact with farmers. It also promotes the level of knowledge and skills of producers and beneficiaries in the agricultural sector.

Purpose- Ineffectiveness and unsustainability of classic approaches to respond to socioeconomic challenges in rural areas is one of the biggest barriers to sustainable development and achieving its goals. Hence, modern tourism as a new strategy has been able to be effective in the evolution of sustainable development in rural areas. Such that today emergence of postmodern tourism has made the tourists be more willing to use cultural attractions and unique experiences in tourism destinations, and the big entertaining places are not attractive to them anymore. On the other hand, rural areas have constantly faced difficulties in attracting tourists because of poverty and economic problems; therefore, creative tourism has been presented as an appropriate approach in developing rural tourism, since it does not need huge investments and uses the existing cultural and natural aspects. Therefore, the present study aims at investigating the role of creative tourism in rural sustainable development and ranking the sample villages according creative tourism components. Design/methodology/approach- The present study is an applied study with regard to function and is a descriptive-analytic study with regard to its nature. We used field and library methods based on observation and questionnaire for data collection. Validity of the questionnaire items was confirmed by experts and using Cronbach alpha formula (0.856). The statistic population includes the households of six historic-cultural villages in northwest of Iran; 313 household heads were randomly selected using the Cochran formula. Statistical tests such as one sample t-test, multi-variate linear regression, and Kruskal–Wallis test were used for data analysis. Findings- The results indicated that the mean values are higher than 3 for all the components of creative tourism except risk taking which is 2.99; the components are also significant at 0.01 level indicating desirable conditions of the target villages with regard to creative tourism. Investigation of regression fitness model indicated that 0.83 of the positive effect of tourism on rural sustainable development is due to creativity in tourism. Also, according to beta values, among the five components of creative tourism, participation (0.286) and and risk taking (0.181) were the most and least effective factors in rural sustainable development through tourism, respectively. The results of Kruskal–Wallis test indicated that Kandovan (65.257) was at the first rank and Varkaneh (41.71) was at the sixth rank with regard to creative tourism and the consequent sustainable development.