Multidimensional analysis of factors affecting rural development in forest villages: a case study of Bursa/Türkiye

Forest villages in Türkiye, similar to those in many other countries, constitute some of the most low-income and low-access communities. This situation has caused more migration from forest villages to cities. The aim of this study is to reveal the most important factors affecting rural development in Bursa, to rank the villages according to their development levels, to derive a comprehensive, applicable, and generalizable development index (DI), and to determine the variables that best explain the differences in development levels. The study also aims to evaluate the subject in terms of forestry policy and to develop suggestions within this scope to eliminate development differences between villages and ensure rural development. Therefore, in order to achieve the purpose of this study and to provide concrete data for the strategies and policies to be developed; various combined and complementary analyses, such as factor analysis, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), regression analysis, and discriminant analysis, were used. In this study, as a result of factor analysis conducted with 52 variables, approximately 72% of the factors affecting rural development in forest villages were explained by three factors: (1) population characteristics and infrastructure status, (2) location of the forest village and number of employees, (3) climatological factors and income status . Based on these three factors, index coefficients were developed at the village level using variables representing the factor dimensions, and villages and districts were ranked according to their level of development using these coefficients. Furthermore, the suitability of this ranking was tested using discriminant analysis based on 52 variables. According to the results of the discriminant analysis, the success rate of the ranking based on DI was found to be 93.2%. Allocating a higher share of resources to underdeveloped villages arguably would support sustainable development of the region. Although forestry work plays an important role in the livelihoods of villagers in underdeveloped villages, forestry-related livelihoods alone are not sufficient.”