Investigation of the Factors Influencing the Access of Marginalized Households Living in the Third District of Mashhad to the Internet by Applying the Neural Network Approach

One of the indicators of post-industrial society and third world countries is the access to the Internet. The importance of urban household access to the Internet has been so great that it has found a crucial place as one of the basic statistical data on population and housing consensus in developed countries, including the US, UK, Australia and Canada, and the information related to household access to the Internet and how they use it (bandwidth, computer, mobile internet, the related costs and the causes of lack of Internet connection) has been considered an important indicator of measuring the development level of households. The Internet as a new phenomenon and how people can access it is in its early stages in Iran, especially in cities. Despite the importance of access to the Internet, households have been facing several problems in connecting it, such as lack of computers, lack of technical skills, high operation costs, poor communication infrastructures, etc. In this study, the basic issue of investigation has been the extent to which marginalized households living in the third district of Mashhad can have access to the Internet, by identifying the reasons and factors influencing it using neural network models. Introducing the neural network models in the Iranian scientific literature in the field of humanities is considered as a means of transition from traditional methods in the analysis of social issues. For this reason, a sample composed of 302 supervisors has been examined. The results show that although 50% of the households studied own computers, 28% of them cannot access the Internet. Among the factors affecting Internet access, computer ownership is the most significant factor, followed by the factor of real estate ownership, space of dwelling, and, finally, technical and specialized skills. Accordingly, some suggestions have been made.