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This paper aims to identify and determine regional tourism axes in Hormozgan Province, Iran, as a region with significant potential

The research method is quantitative and uses the fuzzy accreditation tool and TOPSIS model; the identification, determination and ranking of regional tourism axes have been performed by analyzing the spatial distribution of tourism attractions in the GIS environment.

The results show that given the capacities of Hormozgan Province, at least 15 axes are recognizable. This paper highlights regional tourism planning as a tool for urban and rural socio-economic development in potential provinces such Hormozgan.

This study provides a number of practical implications for regional tourism development as follows: it identifies some of the most important potential axes in Hormozgan Province, which can be considered as investment areas in the national and regional tourism development strategy. The spatial results of this study could be embedded in all urban and rural developmental plans in the province. Tourism investment should shift its spatial concentration from the spot approach, especially islands and cities, to the axis approach while equipping those axes as comprehensive spatial strategic regional tourism plans. Sectoral tourism in each sector including sports, economy and nature could be planned as if sectoral institutions and organizations are going to develop their own tourism goals.

MAPNA Operation and Maintenance Company was established in 2003 to provide long-term services in the energy sector in Iran. This company delivered comprehensive solutions including operation and maintenance, overhaul and repair, commissioning, performance test and training in the fields of power and oil and gas. By 2021, the company had provided long-term operation and maintenance services in more than thirty power plants in Iran and had implemented more than 200 projects worth more than 300 million USD. MAPNA Operation and Maintenance Company believed that a sustainable and responsible management could be achieved through integrated management of the economic, social and environmental impacts of the business. This approach became more apparent when the company provided services countrywide, and they interacted with a wide range of stakeholders. In this context, efforts were made to create common values for both the organization and society. Some of the company’s long-term projects were in less developed areas of the country. One of the social issues in those regions was creating jobs for jobless people and preparing them to work in order to have a better life. The company policy in providing manpower for such projects was to employ indigenous manpower, training them and creating sustainable jobs for them. After hiring local workforce, the company provided professional and general training programs to improve their skills and knowledge. Also, the company was committed to prepare a healthy and safe work environment for employees to learn and comply with ethical and social norms and develop a sustainable environmental attitude by increasing the efficiency of using natural resources and controlling environmental pollution. Work-life balance programs were implemented to ensure a productive presence in the workplace and to maintain a healthy and meaningful family relationship for employees. This case aims to elaborate more on the challenges of the sustainable activities of the long-term projects that MAPNA Operation and Maintenance planned and implemented in terms of its corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship specifically in less developed areas.

Accessing adequate healthcare to all people is one of the main goals of the health sector. The purpose of this paper is to investigate healthcare services access development of the provinces in Iran during 2007 and 2013.

This is a descriptive cross-sectional study. The study population included all the provinces in Iran. The data for 13 variables, including physical and human health resources, was collected from the Ministry of Health and Medical Education and the Statistics Center of Iran. Taxonomy technique was used to determine the degree of healthcare services access development in the provinces.

The findings show that Semnan was the province with the most developed healthcare services access with development score of 0.342 while Sistan Balocehstan province was the least developed with development score of one in 2007. In the year 2013, Chahar-Mahal Bakhtiari and Sistan Baluchestan were the least and most developed provinces with scores of 0.551 and 0.989, respectively. The mean and standard deviation of the development scores in access to healthcare services in 2007 and 2013 were 0.7463±0.1268 and 0.7766±0.1058, respectively.

Most previous studies that examined disparities in access to healthcare resources in Iran only considered one resource. This study applied a taxonomy technique to investigate the disparity and changes in access using 13 main healthcare resources. This approach helped the authors to investigate whether the decisions of the policy makers were intended to eliminate the disparities.

During recent years, the long-run relationship between the unemployment rate (UR) and the labor force participation (LFP) rate has been examined in-depth in developed and developing economies. This paper aims to explore this relationship for Iranian women in 31 provinces from 2005Q2 to 2019Q1.

To examine the existence of a long-run relationship between female LFP and UR, the time-series cointegration approach has been used. Furthermore, regarding the low power of the univariate cointegration approach, the authors consider a panel version of the cointegration tests developed by Westerlund.

Both time-series cointegration tests and panel cointegration test support the unemployment invariance hypothesis for most Iranian provinces, especially the most religious ones. As it implies an invariance to supply side policies, it seems that reducing legal and cultural barriers could be more relevant to decrease female UR and increase LFP than training programs or R&D policies. The present results also suggest that, for this group of regions, a more centralized policy design could be appropriate, instead of a regional one.

This study investigates whether the unemployment invariance hypothesis holds for Iran, which has not been analyzed before for the Iranian labor market. Moreover, the study adopts a regional approach, which takes into account the huge regional differences in Iran.

During recent years, the nexus between unemployment and entrepreneurship has been examined in depth in developed and industrialised economies but rarely in developing economies. The purpose of this paper is to investigate such a relation in the case of 30 Iranian provinces from 2005Q2 to 2017Q4. Using both the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing and vector error correction method (VECM) Granger causality approaches, the findings show that a unidirectional short-run causal relationship from entrepreneurship to unemployment and vice versa was observed in 13 and 10 per cent of provinces, respectively. The authors also find evidence for unidirectional long-run causality in 77 per cent of provinces from unemployment to entrepreneurship, as well as 10 per cent of provinces from entrepreneurship to unemployment. Finally, the results confirm that in long-run, the “prosperity-pull” effects are considerably stronger than the “recession-push” effects in Iranian provinces.

The main target of this paper is to investigate the unemployment-entrepreneurship in the case of 30 Iranian provinces from 2005Q2 to 2017Q4 by using ARDL bounds testing and VECM Granger causality approaches.

The results confirm that in long-run, the “prosperity-pull” effects are considerably stronger than the “recession-push” effects in Iranian provinces. This finding reveals that the unemployment rate can be regarded as a critical instrument for hindering entrepreneurial activity by increasing the risk of business bankruptcy and pulling entrepreneurs out of self-employment. All these results must be taken into account in the construction of useful economic policies for the Iranian labour market.

The economic literature reveals that most empirical studies of the nexus between unemployment and entrepreneurship examined developed and industrialised economies and the analysis of such a relation for developing countries has not been considered by researchers. Thus, to fill this gap, this paper extends the current empirical literature by presenting new empirical evidence for the case of Iran, which has a developing economy.

The purpose of this paper is to list the resources that Iranian health-care professionals used to access drug-related information, to know the features and types of drug information resources which were much more important for health-care professionals, the problems they encountered in seeking drug information and the way they organized and re-found the information that they had retrieved. Drug-related queries are one of the most common types of questions in medical settings.

This was a descriptive-analytical study conducted in Iran during 2014. The data collection tool was a self-designed questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted using Statistical Package for Social Sciences. Descriptive statistics and chi-square test were used to analyse the data and examine the research hypothesis.

Participants used books, drug manuals, search engines and medical databases more frequently, and less than half of them consulted colleagues to acquire drug-related information for clinical, educational and research purposes. Handheld computers were used by most participants to access and store drug information. Lack of access to drug information and lack of enough time were the main obstacles in seeking drug information. A significant association (p value = 0.024) was detected between organizing and re-finding information for future uses.

This study investigated drug information-seeking behaviours of health-care professionals and the way they managed this information in a developing country that lacks necessary information technology infrastructures. Training programmes are required to help health-care professionals to find and access reliable and up-to-date drug information resources and to more easily re-find the found drug information for future uses.

Acute shortage of potable water and energy supplies is expected to raise in developing countries in the near future. One solid way to address these issues is to exploit renewable energy resources efficiently. Hence, this study aims to investigate wind and solar energy use in the coastal areas of southern Iran for renewable-powered seawater desalination and hydrogen production systems.

To accomplish the aforementioned purpose, five areas most prone to the problems in Iran, namely, Mahshahr, Jask and Chabahar ports and Kish and Hormoz islands were scrutinized. To ascertain the amount of wind and solar energy available in the areas, Weibull distribution function, Angstrom–Prescott equation and HOMER software were used.

The findings indicated that wind energy density in Kish was 2,014.86 (kWh/m².yr) and solar energy density in Jask equaled to 2,255.7 (kWh/m².yr) which possessed the best conditions among the areas under study. Moreover, three commercial wind turbines and three photovoltaic systems were examined for supplying energy needed by the water desalination and hydrogen production systems. The results showed that application of wind turbines with rated power of 660, 750 and 900 kWh in Kish could result in desalting 934,145, 1,263,339 and 2,000,450 (m³/yr) of seawater or producing 14,719, 20,896 and 31,521 (kg/yr) of hydrogen, respectively. Additionally, use of photovoltaic systems with efficiency of %14.4, %17.01 and %21.16 in Jask could desalinate 287, 444 and 464 (m³/yr) of seawater or generate 4.5, 7 and 7.3 (kg/yr) of hydrogen, respectively.

Compared to the huge extent of water shortage and environmental pollution, there has not been conducted enough studies to obtain broader view regarding use of renewable energies to solve these issues in Iran. Therefore, this study tries to close this gap and to give other developing nations the idea of water desalination and hydrogen production via renewable energies.

Apitourism is a form of tourism that deals with the culture and traditions of rural communities and can be considered one of the most sustainable methods of development and tourism. Accordingly, this study aims to identify the key factors and plausible scenarios of Iranian apitourism in the future.

This study is applied research. For this purpose, first, by examining the theoretical foundations and interviewing experts, the key factors affecting the future of Iranian apitourism were identified. Then, using a binomial test, these factors were screened. Both critical uncertainty and DEMATEL techniques were used to select the final drivers.

Two drivers of “apitourism information system and promotional activities” and “organizing ecological infrastructure” were selected for scenario planning using critical uncertainty and DEMATEL techniques. According to these two drivers, four golden beehive, expectancy, anonymous bee and black beehive scenarios were developed. Each scenario represents a situation for apitourism in the future. According to the criteria of trend compliance, fact-based plausibility and compliance with current data, the “Black Beehive” scenario was selected as the most likely scenario. The “Golden Beehive” scenario shows the best case in terms of apitourism information system and implementation of promotional activities and organizing and providing ecological infrastructure. The “Black Beehive” scenario, on the other hand, describes an isolated and vulnerable system.

Developing plausible Iranian apitourism scenarios helps key stakeholders and actors develop flexible plans for various situations.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected many different aspects of people’s lives around the world, including household food security. This study aims to investigate the food security status and its determinants, with emphasis on perceived social support among the Iranian population during the epidemic..

This cross-sectional study was conducted among 2,871 Iranian adults by social media in all provinces of the country. Demographic and socioeconomic information, household food security status and perceived social support status were assessed by the validated questionnaires. Data was analyzed by statistical package for the social sciences version 22.0, with one-way ANOVA, Chi-square and multinomial logistic regression tests.

The prevalence of food security among the studied population was 55.2%. The results indicated that perceived social support plays a protective role on food security [odds ratio (OR) = 1.07, confidence interval (CI) = 1.06, 1.09, P-value < 0.001]. Reduced income during the epidemic [OR = 0.29, CI = 0.17, 0.47, P-value < 0.001] and presence of an old person (>65 years old) in the household [OR = 1.72, CI = 1.14, 2.60, P-value < 0.05], were significantly higher among moderate to severe food insecure group than food-secure group. More monthly income [OR = 0.28, CI = 0.13, 0.57, P-value < 0.001] and homeownership [OR = 1.83, CI = 1.22, 2.75, P-value < 0.05] were also predictors of food security status.

The development of supportive strategies which act immediately can protect vulnerable people against the consequences of the epidemic, including food insecurity. Long-term planning should also be considered to improve society’s resistance against such disasters.