Explaining spatial impacts of transportation network on rural development in Tehran province

The socio-economic changes of recent decades have resulted in imbalances and over-concentration of facilities in some places and deprivation of other locations. This problem is more severe in rural areas and the imbalance and fair distribution of services are more evident. One of the basic services and infrastructure in these areas is the road transportation network. The purpose of this study is to explain the spatial impacts of transportation network on rural development. The research method is analytical and is based on spatial statistics. According to the spatial nature of data and the spatial dependence of these data, the Geographically Weighted Regression technique has been used. The study area in Tehran province and the statistical population of the study consisted of all villages of more than 20 households in Tehran province. A village was randomly selected from each district and based on the Cochran formula, 380 households were calculated as samples. With a minimum of 10 households per village, 717 families were sampled to increase generalizability. In this study, 45 indicators were investigated and field data and survey data were gathered and analyzed. The results of this research indicate that the northern and eastern districts of Tehran metropolitan area, which are influenced by the city of Tehran, as well as the eastern districts of the province, transport had the most impact on their rural development and the western districts of the province had the least impact enjoyed.