The Success of Rural Community-Based Tourism Development from the Perspective of the Local Community (Case Study: Asiab-Sar Village, Behshahr County)

INTRODUCTION In recent years, so many countries have paid many attention to tourism as a strategy to make money and benefit for the local communities. Many researchers consider tourism an appropriate strategy for economic and social development of developing countries know. Despite all the benefits of community-based tourism, in most developing countries, little authority is given to the local community and dont pay attention to their abilities to manage their resources in order to maximize the benefits of tourism. Because the tourism strategy in these countries is a government-led and serves the achievement of social and economic agendas of their own. In this study, we try to examine all the aspects of this type of tourism from the perspective of the local community. Depending on the capabilities and multiple historical and natural attractions, Asiab-Sar village is selected as the study area. This paper seeks to answer the following question: In the eyes of the local community, to what extent CBT Success Factors are implemented in the Asiab-Sar village? The answer to this question is essential in order to improve its implementation and therefore sustainable development of local communities.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Sustainable tourism which is derived from the phrase sustainable development, is an alternative to mass tourism and an effort to increase the positive effects and mitigate the negative effects of tourism on the local community and the natural environment. In a general definition, all kinds of tourism that are compatible with sustainable development or cause it, can be called sustainable tourism. In recent years, many researchers have focused on creating sustainable tourism indicators with the aim of implementing this concept. Community involvement is considered by most researchers one of the necessary tools for the development of sustainable tourism at national and local levels. Community involvement through various ways causes Sustainable tourism. Host communities play an important role in implementing programs. Thus, their participation in the planning process of sustainable tourism is essential. The main focus of community-based tourism is the participation of local communities in sustainable tourism development and planning processes. Also, this type of tourism focus on achieving sustainable development goals of society and can be considered as a tool to implement sustainable tourism development. CBT, is a form of alternative tourism that maximize the benefits of the local community and focus on the capacity building and empowerment of local people, as a means to achieve community development. Despite the different definitions of CBT, all of them have common points. Including: 1. This type of tourism focuses on the local community control on development. 2. The local community should be involved in planning and management processes. 3. The benefits of tourism should be fairly distributed among the community and (4) the interaction between guests and hosts should be strengthened.
METHODOLOGY This is a questionnaire-based survey research. The sample comprised 448 households of Asyab-Sar village out of which 210 households were selected using Morgan table. Due to the uncertainty of the Sampling frame in this study, the judgmental sampling was used. In order to measure people's attitudes to the success of any one of the success factors of CBT, CBT assessment scale is used which contains 10 indicators. These indicators include: community involvement, sharing interests, protection of resources, ownership of the local community, internal and external support, management and leadership, communication among stakeholders, quality of life, the scale of development of tourism and tourist satisfaction that, in total, in the form of 50 questions were asked. In order to measure each question, the whole five-item Likert was used ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). In order to answer the key question, one sample T-test was used.
DISCUSSION According to the findings of this study, from the perspective of the residents, Among the ten indicators of CBT, only three indicators of community ownership, protection from internal and external resources and support, respectively have an average more than (3) and other indicators are less than average (3). The index of ownership of the local community with an average equal to 3.27 and the index of quality of life with an average equal to 2.14 have the highest and the lowest average.
CONCLUSION In the Asiab-Sar village due to the very high motivation of local people to develop tourism, the possibility to participate in projects and programs should be given to them. It should be noted that just giving the right to participate to the local community, doesn’t guarantee their participation. It should be capacity building too. meaning that the right tools for participation of society must also be provided. Participation in practice means giving people the right to participate as well as providing the right tools for their use of this right. in Asiab-Sar village, most people do not have the information and knowledge to participate in tourism development. Also, many local people are facing difficulties in raising funds and resources for facilities and infrastructure required for the development of tourism. The local community is informed from the fact that has not passed the necessary training in the field of tourism and doesn’t have the attributes needed to face the challenges of the production of goods and services suitable for tourists and desires to learn and control the development of tourism in the region. For the development of CBT in the Asiab-Sar village, primarily it is required that basic resources such as education of the local community and infrastructure be developed and then Management and control of the development of tourism given to the local community. Hence, NGOs and other related organizations such as universities should assume the role of the training of the local community and government agencies should make appropriate facilities for people in order to create the tourism business.