Spatial Analysis of the Performance of Village Administrations in Rural Economy Development in Central District of Mashhad

The development of rural settlements mostly depends on such someimportant factors likeeffective local management. Moreover, rural development can be achieved through creating organized groups likevillage administrations. Rural management (village administration) plays an important role in executing rural development activities and measuring the performance of rural managers paves the way of improving villagers’ livelihood.This research tried to explorethe village headmen’s performance in rural areas of centraldistrict of Mashhad. The applied study used descriptive-analytical method and a researcher-made questionnaire. Twelve villages of the central district of Mashhad were studied. Using Cochran formula and considering an error of 5%, the size of the sample was determined to be 367 households. The collecteddatawere analyzed by SPSS and GIS software and WASPAS. The results showed that the performance of the village headmen regarding unemployment reduction, employment development, and encouraging investment indicators is not good. Regarding “the effort to increase income” their performance is normal. Generally, their performance regarding economic growth variable of the villages ismoderate. Moreover, the results of WASP model showed that the village headmen of Farmad, Doostabad, and Amir Abad villages performed better than the heads of other villages. The spatial analysis of village headmen’s performance regarding the development of rural economy showed that there is a significant relationship between the performance of village headmen with indicators such as the distance to Mashhad (r= -0.902), population size (r= -0.646), growth rate (r= -0.656), cultivated area (r= 0.584), literate population (r= 0.618) and the number of employees (r= 0.620).