The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors improvement of sustainable livelihoods from the perspective of local people of Ardabil County. First, factors affecting effectiveness improvement of sustainable livelihoods in the study area were identified from the perspective of local elites using semi-structured interviews. To achieve this goal, 35 residents of studied region were interviewed individually with college education and at least a bachelor's degree. In the second step of study, in order to understand and analyze rural communities' perspective of and their theoretical agreement degree with the results of the first step, 39 identified causes were the questionnaire design basis by Likert method. It can be said that studied population in this study consists of all villagers living in rural areas of Ardabil County in 2016 (N= 85053), among which 383 persons were selected as statistical sample using Cochran formula. In order to analyze the data, factor analysis model was used and the results of this model showed the most important factor improvement of sustainable livelihoods from the perspective of local people in studied region includes four components (entrepreneurship and fortification of economical infrastructures, support of demand- side and governmental interventional action, fortification of social capital and social empowerment and environmental management and fortification of physical infrastructures) that explained variance and the cumulative variance by the five factors 60.66. And finally, practical suggestions have been presented according to the results of the study.

Today, in the context of sustainable rural development, the need to move quickly from traditional livelihoods to sustainable livelihood patterns is evident. It is obvious that achieving this change is not possible without regard to the household's livelihoods and assets. Livelihoods include the types of natural, physical, human, social and financial assets that are considered as essential to the livelihoods of the poor. Accordingly, the main objective of this study is to measure the level of livelihoods of households living in the border villages of Torbat-e-yam. The descriptive-analytic research methodology is an applied-developmental type. In the present study, livelihood assets were categorized into 5 types of assets with the help of 64 indicators. These indices in the confirmatory factor analysis explained 66% of the variance, and also the Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.91, indicating the validity and reliability of the research tool. The statistical population of the study is all border villages in more than 20 households in Torbat-e Jam. The unit analyzes 264 households in 17 villages located 10 kilometers from the border between Iran and Afghanistan. The results of the study showed that the livelihood of rural households living at the border is very low, so that the average human capital is 2.13, capital 1.87, social capital 2.48, physical capital 1.81, natural capital 12 / 2 in the Likert spectrum is significantly lower than the theoretical one. Also, the "livelihood assets" structure with an average of 2.22 was measured as "low". The results of the research show that the livelihood patterns of the border villages continue to be characterized by traditional livelihoods and have little adaptation to sustainable livelihoods, and the settlement in the village, along with the geographical isolation of the borders, has created many livelihoods for the dwelling population. Any activity in the field of livelihood modeling requires attention to the multiplicity of livelihoods.