Determination of Economic and Social Factors on of Electricity Expenditure for Rural Households in Iran: Batch Self-Organizing Map Approach

Today, electricity is considered as one of the countries' development infrastructure, and its consumption has been increasing over the past years. Electricity consumption in Iran is always higher than global standards. In addition, in recent years, population growth, migrating villagers to cities and improving their living standards, urban development, and industrial, agricultural and service activities have further increased electricity demand. Promoting the welfare of villagers is not enough to prevent them from migrating to cities as one of the country's problems, but a condition is required. Therefore, electricity supply and management of its consumption in the continuation of electricity supply to the villages is important due to the limited supply side and intensification due to the successive drought in the country in recent years. For this reason, in this research, the identification of socioeconomic factors affecting the functions of household electricity expenditure in different seasons of the year has been investigated. To do this, self-organized maps have been used. The results show that a total of 2 quantitative factors and 13 qualitative factors were identified in three levels of influence on the household electric power consumption of the villagers.