The Impact of Rural Information and Communication Technology on Indicators of Development of Creative Villages in Iran (Case Study: Mashhad Suburban Settlements)

The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has an effect on development of Creative Villages as a new approach in using the existing rural capabilities and capacities to revive the rural areas. This study seeks to analyze the impact of RICT on the indicators of development of Creative Villages in suburban settlements in Mashhad County.

A descriptive-analytical research method was employed in this fundamental study, and documentary and survey methods have been used for collecting the data. The study population included households in 8 villages around Mashhad (N = 20813). These villages had a rural ICT office and a population of over 1,000 households. The sample was estimated using Cochran's formula; accordingly, 194 households were selected by systematic random sampling.

Spatial analysis of the main variables was performed using Combined Compromise Solution and fuzzy gray analysis. The result showed that the villages of Gorji Sofla, Hosseinabad Gharghi, Dostabad and Dehroud have the highest, and the villages of Kal Zarkash and Chahar Borj have the lowest level of use of RICT services and the indicator of the Creative Village. Using the partial least squares (PLS) technique, among the research indicators, "promoting and training" with the coefficient of 0.591 had the most direct effect on the dependent variable. Also, variable dimension of "awareness of RICT services", considering the direct and indirect effects, with a coefficient of 0.816, has had a greater impact on the indicators of development of Creative Villages in rural settlements. Given the value of R2 (0.998), we concluded that RICT has a high-level impact on the indicators of development of Creative Villages.