10.57647/jrs-2026-1601.04

Exploring the Impact of Villages' Sustainability on Community Perceptions towards Ecosystem Services

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  • Meysam Shahabi Nejad1,
  • Hossein Arzani*2,
  • Seyed Akbar Javadi1,
  • Reza Bagheri3,
  1. Department of Nature Engineering, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
  2. Department of Reclamation of Arid and Mountainous Regions, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran
  3. Department of Natural Resources, Baf.C., Islamic Azad University, Baft, Iran

Received: 2025-02-01

Revised: 2025-05-01

Accepted: 2025-05-15

Published in Issue 2026-03-31

Copyright (c) 2025 Meysam Shahabi Nejad, Hossein Arzani, Seyed Akbar Javadi, Reza Bagheri (Author)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Shahabi Nejad, M., Arzani, H., Javadi, S. A., & Bagheri, R. (2026). Exploring the Impact of Villages’ Sustainability on Community Perceptions towards Ecosystem Services. Journal of Rangeland Science, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.57647/jrs-2026-1601.04
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Abstract

Recently, while public perception has become a prominent scientific approach to valuing ecosystem services, less focus has been given to local communities' perspectives and the factors shaping their valuation of direct ecosystem benefits. This research aimed to evaluate the effects of residential sustainability, encompassing social, economic, and environmental dimensions, on how local communities perceive and assess ecosystem services. To achieve this, we studied 63 villages within a 20 km radius of Khabr National Park in Kerman Province, Iran. We examined seven environmental/ecological indicators, 15 social indicators, and seven economic indicators. We employed factor analysis to determine the factor loadings, which indicated the importance of each index. After identifying the influential factors and calculating their importance coefficients using the Varimax rotation method, we applied the VIKOR multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach to prioritize the villages under various scenarios. The results indicated that a one-unit increase in sustainability led to significant changes in the provision of ecosystem services: a decrease of 24 times for fuel, an increase of 8.3 times for fodder, an increase of 21 times for medicinal resources, an increase of 4.8 times for food, and an increase of 21.2 times for pollination services. This research highlights a promising insight: by improving living conditions and enhancing sustainability, local communities' perspectives on the use of ecosystem services can be positively influenced.

Keywords

  • Multi-criteria decision-making,
  • Livelihood,
  • Khabr National Park
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