The Assessment of Utility and the Role of Rural Entrepreneurship Ecosystem in West Azerbaijan Province

This is an exploratory and descriptive-analytical research. At first, this study aims to assess the status of the rural entrepreneurship ecosystem. Moreover, it assesses the role of each sub-systems of entrepreneurship ecosystem in the emergence of the conditions. The data were collected from literatures and field surveys (questionnaire and observation).   The statistical community of current research includes local experts (such as members of Islamic councils of villages and villagers), which consists of 3108 people. 341 people were selected as the sample by stratified sampling using Cochran method. In the first step, one-sample T-test in SPSS software is applied to analyze  the questionnaires. The findings show that two subsystems, "Equity of Laws and Regulations" and "Entrepreneurship Education in Universities", are just significant at the level of 0.05 out of the 12 subsystems. Although these two sub-systems are favorable to the national pattern, but none of them perform well in the global model. As the second step, the role of each subsystems in the occurrence of existing conditions was analyzed using the factor analysis method in the LISREL software. It is observed that sub-ecosystems of "commercial and legal infrastructure" and "government programs for entrepreneurship" have maximum effect (by 91% and 75%), and the sub-ecosystem of "social norms" has the minimum effect (by 43%) on the performance of rural entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Extended Abstract
1-Introduction
Due to determining entrepreneurship in the economic success of a country and shaping the spatial distribution of economic activities in national realm, investigating the entrepreneurial environment and its role in developing entrepreneurial activities is of great importance today. The reality of the villages in Iran shows that job opportunities are limited in rural areas of Iran, so that there is no hope for them in rural areas; hence they migrate to big cities. This suggests a different function of rural and urban ecosystems. Considering that the above conditions are in the villages of West Azarbaijan province, in order to identify and resolve some of these problems, the present article seeks to assess the utility of rural entrepreneurship ecosystem of the study area in comparison with the national and international model as well as the role of Each subsystem in its present condition.
 
2-Materials and Methods
 This is an exploratory and descriptive-analytical research. The data were collected from library studies and field surveys (The GEM questionnaire was used). The statistical community of the survey includes local experts (members of Islamic councils of villages and villagers), in which 341 people were selected as the sample using stratified sampling. In the first step, one-sample T-test was used in SPSS software to analyze the data from the questionnaires. In the second step, using the factor analysis method in LISREL software environment, the role of each subsystems in the occurrence of existing conditions was analyzed.
3-Results and Discussion
 The results showed that the performance of rural entrepreneurship ecosystems in the region, while largely conforming to its national model, is only available in two subsystems, "Balancing rules and regulations" and "Entrepreneurship education at universities". The view of local experts is better than its national model. However, compared to the global pattern, none of the 12 subsystems under consideration is optimal. Studied by government agencies and organizations, there are specific programs in rural areas supporting entrepreneurs in the field of financial and technical assistance. The villagers, on the other hand, do not have enough access to existing rural entrepreneurship programs which is due to lack of financial support sources for rural and limited entrepreneurs. The existence of government financial support for common bank loans, the absence of private investors in Rural Neighborhood and the lack of proper concentration of private and public sector in the creation of rural businesses and, consequently, low profitability of businesses in this sector and deprivation of possibility of supplying stocks to finance businesses, the undesirable nature of the underlying systems, is justified.
 The other results show the lack of access to new and growing new and emerging business enterprises by risky investments, lack of priority of supportive policies for new and growing businesses for local government , weakness in government assistance through relevant organizations and institutions to new rural businesses, lack of attention to entrepreneurship issues, and the creation of new businesses in school curricula, the inability and accessibility of new businesses to New and up-to-date technologies, lack of access to new and developing businesses to professional and accounting services, the difficulty of entering businesses. New to new markets, the inability of new businesses to cover the cost of utilizing gas, water and electricity, sewage, etc., the lack of importance and attention of the community culture to self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal initiative, have the greatest impact.
The results for rural entrepreneurship ecosystem indicate that among 9 sub-systems (in the form of 12 subsystems), sub-systems of "commercial and legal infrastructure" and "government programs for entrepreneurship" with the coefficients of 0.91 and 0.75, respectively, have the most significant and sub-systems of "social norms" and "physical infrastructure" with a coefficient of 0.43 and 0.49, respectively, have the least effect on the undesirable performance of entrepreneurial ecosystem rural areas in the study area. In other words, the subsystem "Commercial and Criminal Infrastructure" 91% and the sub-ecosystem of "cultural-social norms" account for 43% of the poor performance of the rural entrepreneurship ecosystem.
4-Conclusion
 In order to curb the poor functioning of the rural ecosystem, the region should be primarily built and strengthened by physical and soft infrastructure. This issue is heavily dependent on government policies and policies. According to the study area, this index has relative utility relative to other indicators. But it is necessary to pay particular attention to non-physical dimensions. In the economic sphere, due to the financial weakness of the villagers, the establishment and strengthening of rural lending enterprises, rural development institutions and sectors supporting the bodies of government agencies, such as banks and government departments will make the field of entrepreneurship education and the transfer of research and development, which is a shared responsibility of the government, university and private sector. This is more of a national problem than a local problem. In this regard, along with the need for the government to reform the educational system of the country, it can be done by providing entrepreneurship extension programs through active institutions in rural areas such as cooperatives and rural companies. On the other hand, with the establishment and strengthening of science and technology park in the province and the University of Urmia, it can be done by researching and developing it into rural areas and related businesses. Also, by creating centers for accelerating business in high schools and technical and vocational schools or promoting the use of virtual incubators, especially in rural areas with high schools and colleges, a major part of the issues of skills training Entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer to villagers.