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Open research questions in Rural development and sustainability

84 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 3,947 Rural development and sustainability papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • However, evaluations of Environmental Conflict Resolution (ECR) processes based on direct observation remain scarce, despite ECR existing for over half a century.

    Unlocking Antlers? An Evaluation of an Environmental Mediation Process in Scotland Based on Direct Observation · 2025 · DOI

  • To disentangle the notion of peripheral regions as homogeneous and lacking knowledge sources, capital and networks, the paper discusses the characteristics of four types of peripheral regions: resilient regional service centres; locked-in specialized regions; vulnerable rural regions; and locked-in and vulnerable resource-based regions.

    Varieties of periphery and local agency in regional development · 2022 · DOI

  • The author challenges the view, quite widespread in sociology, according to which the rural community is insufficiently organized as a civic society, and that its situation is a result of a collision between the system of values governing traditional local cultural resources of agricultural villages and modern market rules.

    Economy and culture. The framework of reflection in the debate on the countryside · 2017 · DOI

  • Harper County is typical of many rural counties in Kansas: it is sparsely populated, predominantly white, and has a higher than average proportion of residents age 65 and older.

    Perceptions of Risk and Reward of Rapid Energy Exploration in Rural Kansas: Are Older Adults Different? · 2016

  • The findings provide greater understanding of the pressures and realities of working in small remote towns and the challenges of responding to the expectations and realities of relationships including the expectation of working with friends and family members of friends or colleagues: issues that have not been adequately studied in the literature to date.

    Multiple Relationships · 2012 · DOI

  • As policymakers consider new policy initiatives in rural capital markets, two questions loom large: Are there shortcomings in rural capital markets? And if so, what might be done to resolve them? Evaluating Rural Markets While financial markets are critical to the rural economy, they are not well understood.

    Rethinking Rural America's Financial Markets · 1999

  • It is scarcely necessary to add that adequate enquiries of this order will require leaps of the sociological imagination. Quite apart from the challenge of a new task, such an effort is warranted for its value in contextualizing local studies,6 in introd icing our students to sociological concepts through constructs of regions o:’ direct experience to them’, and-as our skills and confidence in apprehending regional social com- plexities grow-in contributing to the processes of regional planning.

    Regions and Their Social Structures · 1971 · DOI

  • The number of beasts that a farmer kept was strictly limited by the acreage of his part of the meadows and the amount of hay he could collect; but since the farmers tended to keep more cattle than they could feed properly, most cows did not get enough fodder during the winter months and thus gave no milk.

    Social and Technical Change in an Alandic Island Community · 1968 · DOI

  • Whatever else this law may accom- plish, it has already given impetus to further study of county problems by members of the legislature and if some action is started, whether brought to satisfactory conclusion or not, the basic questions involved will be placed squarely before the voters in some one or more financially troubled political subdivisions.

    County disorganization for North Dakota · 1939 · DOI

  • One reason for the shortage of income funds is insufficient source funds, and another reason is the inability to fully and effectively utilize idle resources and the lack of ability to convert resources into "cash flow".

    The Internal Logic and Practical Pathways of Rural Collective Economic Organizations Empowering Rural Elderly Care Services · 2026 · DOI

  • ABSTRACT Land degradation in rural areas is often addressed through technical and economic measures, while the relational and emotional dimensions of governance remain underexplored.

    Collective Care and Rural Transitions: The Role of Empathy in Addressing Land Degradation · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research should examine how discourses of development intersect with class, gender, ethnicity, and other social cat- egories, in order to deepen understanding of how the development imperative oper- ates across different social positions and life courses.

    Negotiating the imperative of personal development in a rural context · 2026 · DOI

  • In addition, it is interesting to address the lack of consensus on the ability of expectations to act as a predictor of citizen satisfaction and the insufficient attention paid to the distinction between normative and predictive expectations.

    The Expectancy-Disconfirmation Model in the analysis of citizen satisfaction in depopulated regions: Implications for sustainable long term rural development policy · 2025 · DOI

  • The results of the review demonstrate that the majority of studies focus on regions with a high population density that are in close proximity to major urban centres, thus revealing a gap in knowledge regarding settlement across more rural and northern parts of the country.

    Settling beyond big cities: A scoping review of the Canadian literature on immigration to rural and smaller communities · 2024 · DOI

  • Although pathways to permanent residency provided through pilot programs can be attractive, their effectiveness in retaining skilled workers within underpopulated rural regions remains understudied.

    "Why Should I Move to the Countryside?": Exploring New Attempts for Fostering Inclusion in Rural Communities · 2024 · DOI

  • and diversity of immigrants, with visible yet under-researched impacts for less populated regions that historically have been dominated by Pākehā (New Zealanders of European descent) and Māori populations.

    Settling in New Zealand’s Small Towns: Experiences of Minority Ethnic Immigrants · 2023 · DOI

  • Results offer an overview of the potentiality of the abandonment of an emergency approach limited to the sole provision of shelters to migrant workers for adopting a more structured and holistic approach to territorial planning.

    Fruit production and exploited labor in northern Italy: Redefining urban responsibility toward the agrarian ground · 2023 · DOI

  • Last but not least, although short videos unprecedentedly amplify the voice of the countryside’s counter-hegemonic discourse, such resistance is still limited by the inherently unbalanced power relations between the urban and the rural.

    Unsilencing the Home Village: A Discursive-Theoretical Analysis of the Construction of the Rural in Chinese Short Videos · 2022 · DOI

  • While there is a burgeoning literature on masculinities in Irish literary, cultural and sociological studies, there are however few studies on the intersection of age and masculinities, or across disciplines.

    Wedded to the land? Representations of rural ageing masculinities in Irish culture and society · 2022 · DOI

  • Whether or not this is a permanent trend remains to be seen, but it has brought to the fore the diversity of rural space, with some places faring much better than others.

    Finding rural community resilience: Understanding the role of anchor institutions · 2022 · DOI

  • Digital hubs are often proposed as a way of overcoming digital exclusion in rural and small-town contexts, yet studies into how to set up such a hub in these challenging contexts are scarce.

    Hubs, hopes and high stakes for a relatively disadvantaged low tech place · 2021 · DOI

  • While there is no consensus on the concept of resilience itself, there are several approaches and perspectives related to possibly detecting signs of its existence in rural communities.

    Community resilience in post-socialist rural areas · 2020 · DOI

  • The Amazon forests, the Northern artic regions, the Australian bush and Siberian plains all have very low demographic densities, but they are rarely studied as pertaining to the same global category.

    Sparsely populated regions as a specific geographical environment · 2020 · DOI

  • Between family and rental markets, there is little evidence that young people’s engagement with crop production is limited by their inability to access land.

    Hard work and hazard: Young people and agricultural commercialisation in Africa · 2020 · DOI

  • By presenting the results of our interview survey with urban newcomers to peripheral rural areas of Czechia, we would like to draw attention to this alternative and under-researched way of rural development, especially in the Central and Eastern Europe.

    Entrepreneurial in-migration and rural development in Czechia: A challenge of integrating the local and extra-local in rural planning · 2019 · DOI

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84 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 3,947 Rural development and sustainability papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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