The Impacts of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Rural Industrial Units of Hamedan County

1. Today a major part of the world's population lives in rural areas and to provide welfare and poverty alleviation in these communities, rural sustainability and maintenance is considered as one of the rural development goals in recent decades. Therefore, to achieve dynamicity and welfare in villages, new technologies should be addressed in the rural communities. At present, information and communication technology (ICT) is growing worldwide and the effects of applying this technology in various fields, especially small businesses has been revealed more than past. Furthermore, access and use of new technologies, especially information and communication technologies should be seriously considered for a better rural life. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of information and communication technologies in industrial units located in rural areas of Hamadan city.
2. The present study is an applied research which is done by a descriptive-surveying method. The most important independent variables in this study were industrial unit's access to ICT in rural areas, the rural business type, discipline, education, participation in training courses related to ICT, and the familiarity to the software. Meanwhile, the dependent variables were economic impacts, social impacts, training-skill effects, customer satisfaction, and marketing. The research population included all 205 active units located in rural areas of Hamadan city in 2014. Sample selection was done through Cochran's formula and a number of 125 samples were calculated. The data collection instrument was a questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by specialists. Its reliability was calculated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. In order to analyze the data, one sample t-test, F test, and Pearson correlation coefficient were used.
3. Results about the extent of ICT's impact on industrial units in rural areas showed that the highest rate of ICT impacts were related to the variables like optimum use from time, reducing administrative costs, reducing the human costs, better data processing and financial transactions. The results about barriers to ICT use showed that lack of manager's computer experience and knowledge, people and official's unfamiliarity with ICT functions, lack of manager's knowledge about modern technologies, lack of training courses about ICT issues for staff were the most important obstacles for using ICT in industrial units of rural areas. Findings revealed that the highest impacts of ICT in industrial units have been regarded as increasing revenue and marketing while the social and customer satisfaction impacts of ICT were relatively lower than other variables. The results showed a significant relationship between the ICT's knowledge of employees with and the amount of ICT usage in these units. The results also showed a significant relationship between both employee's education and their participation in training courses with use of ICT in industrial units, but there was no significant relationship between the use of ICT and some independent variables such as age, experience, and discipline.
4. The results show that the use of ICT has been effective in increasing income and reducing small businesse's costs. Therefore, it is recommended, to better produce and better compete in industrial units, more attention should be given and more measures should be developed for using the ICTs.
Based on the results of the present study, the use of ICT has been effective on customer satisfaction as well as small businesses marketing. It is therefore recommended that to make these units more active with each other and strengthen their interaction with customers, necessary financial support and facilities should be available to improve information and communication infrastructures. The results showed that people who participated in training courses used and addressed ICT more than other employees. Therefore, it is recommended that the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade, as well as all other relevant institutes encourage more training courses related to information and communication technologies for both managers and employees in rural industrial units.
Despite the importance of the industrial units in the rural areas, the use of ICTs, how to use these technologies and their effects on the industrial units have not been considered and studied in Iran, yet. The originality of this research is to find answers to such questions as what effects the use of ICT have on reducing costs, increasing revenue, improving marketing, and purchasing industrial products. The results of this research may be used by authorities and policy-makers on rural development and ICT both in Iran and other nations that have similar situations.