Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

IMPACT OF VILLAGERS’ PARTICIPATION ON DEVELOPING RURAL TOURISM (A CASE STUDY OF KALAT COUNTY)

Nahid Shahabfar, Mohammad Ali Ahmadian and Hamid Jafari

Abstract

Tourism is one of active and dynamic parts of economy in the current era, and rural tourism can be considered as a new approach for preserving rural life and developing villages. In the light of unmarred natural, historical and cultural resources of Iran villages, rural tourism can be of great importance as a new policy. An effective strategy to develop rural tourism is exploitation of villagersÂ’ participatory capacities. Considering lack of the possibility of vast investments in Iran tourism sector, minor investment together with participation of local societies may be of notable benefit to dynamism of this industry in Iran. In this context, the current study has focused on investigating the participatory role of local society in developing rural tourism using descriptive-analytic methods and by distributing questionnaires among villagers of ten elite villages of Kalat county. The obtained results from statistical analysis of items and questionnaires reveal that villagers have medium to high perception towards participation in tourism. So, villagersÂ’ intuitions and thoughts about participating in tourism affairs in targeted area are positive; a total of 41.7 percent of villagers declared their interest to participate in tourism as high and very high, and 41.7 percent of them, as well, express the profitability of participatory investment in tourism affairs as high and very high. The significance of hypothesis was investigated by Pearson test and regression coefficient, and considering the small amount of P coefficient and R value, it is predicted that villagersÂ’ participation in tourism with probability of 97.6 percent will lead to development of tourism