Modeling the regional agro-elite’s social position in rural areas’ sustainable development system

Abstract

The article concretizes the social position of the regional agrarian elite in the system of sustainable development of rural areas on the basis of factor analysis carried out by the method of principal components. A survey of 73 leaders and chief specialists of successful agricultural organizations in the South of Russia, traditionally represented by rural areas, was carried out in October-November, 2020 using Google Forms. The data was processed in SPSS Statistics (version 21) and used the Sustainable Development Goals proclaimed by the UN in 2015 as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals were assessed on a five-point scale of significance in terms of relevance for agricultural organizations in rural areas of southern Russia. The assessments show the social position of the regional agrarian elite regarding the goal-setting in the field of sustainable development, both in rural areas and agricultural organizations. Factor analysis was carried out by the method of separation of the main components with Varimax Rotation with Kaiser Normalization. We present the models of the regional agrarian elite’s social position in the system of sustainable development of territories.