علی اکبر عنابستانی - Professor, Department of Geography & Rural Planning, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.
سید رضا حسینی کهنوج - Ph.D. Student, Department of Geography & Rural Planning, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.

The importance of entrepreneurship and the environmental factors affecting it is so much that during two recent decades it has become an essential topic among researchers and scholars; such that some researchers have called this period as the age of entrepreneurship. The present study aims at identifying and prioritizing the environmental factors affecting the development of entrepreneurial components among rural farmers. The methodology of the study is applied from the point of view of purpose. The area studies in this research includes the inhabitants of the villages with more than ۵۰ households in Sardouyeh rural district; and the research units are the owners of successful businesses and innovators in agriculture sector. The criteria for selecting the sample population was being engaged in the challenges in development of entrepreneurship. ۵۰ people were selected as the sample society randomly, and then the questionnaires were distributed among them. The obtained results were analyzed by using grey TOPSIS and fuzzy TOPSIS models; combining these models by merging technique indicated that the studied rural areas affect the development of entrepreneurial components at different levels among which Kahnoudj Sadat rural area (۱.۱۶) and Dareh Roud (۲.۵) are at the highest levels, while Garikan rural area (۹.۵) and Dowlatabad (۸.۶۶) are the lowest levels.

Environmental factors, rural entrepreneurship, Grey Relation Analysis, Fuzzy TOPSIS, Merging technique