Assessing effects of Transportation on Social Development in Rural Araes (Case study: Marginal Villages on Divandare - Sanandaj Road)

Transportation plays an important role in social development. The areas which have less access to transportation face large structural barriers in their process of social development. In this regard, the lack of access to transportation is major obstacle to achieve the sustainable rural development purposes. So access to transportation as an indicator of sustainable rural development can have different effects on indicators of social development in rural areas. This study examines the impact of the access to Sanandaj - Diwandareh road on improving social indicators of villages that located on the periphery of the road. Required data has been gathered by documents and field studies and questionnaire. In this regard first, social development index as the dependent variable was defined and designed in the form of 6 indicators. Then 64 items related to education, health, employment and income, social participation, social security and social services were defined to measure the indicators. The sample for investigation was 210 rural households and 14 local authorities of villages. The sample was selected and sorted randomly. For validity and reliability of the questionnaire we have used rural experts’ comments and Cronbach’s alpha test, respectively. Collected data were analyzed by independent and paired t-test. The results suggest an inverse relationship between the level of social development of the villages and their distances from the Sanandaj – Diwandarreh road. Also there is a significant difference between the status of social development indicators of villages that are located on the periphery of the axis and those which are located in 10 kilometers far from the road.