Attitude of Local Residents Towards the Sustainable Development of Rural Tourism: Identification of Opportunities and Challenges (Case Study: Villages of Alborz Province)

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Assistant Professor, Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Management and Accounting, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The main goal of the current research is to investigate and analyze the attitude of local residents towards the sustainable development of rural tourism to identify the opportunities and challenges of this type of tourism, which has been done with the case study of the villages of Alborz province. The research method is mixed, which uses the qualitative method of the research object in the first stage and the quantitative survey method in the second stage. The approach of the present research is sequential exploratory. The data collection tools are semi-structured interviews in the first stage and questionnaires in the second stage. According to the research findings in the qualitative phase, the experts and informants were selected using the purposeful sampling method, and finally, by aggregating 31 interviews, 134 raw propositions were extracted, which were extracted using the three-axis coding method in the form of open codes. They were classified as central and selective. Finally, among 134 raw propositions, 70 open codes, 21 core codes, and six selective codes were obtained. In the quantitative stage, analyzes were performed using SPSS26 and SmartPLS3 soft-ware. According to the quantitative findings of the obtained values, it was found that among the dimensions, the socio-cultural dimension has high values. According to the research results, the sus-tainable development of rural tourism will contribute to the qualitative development, organization, and management of rural tourism and attract investment in the tourism industry. 

Keywords

Main Subjects


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