Investigation of the relationship between mental indexes based on perception and perspective of local society and the improvement of the tourism industry quality (Case study: Alborz province)

From among the actions conducted in the developed and developing countries in order to achieve sustainable development and reduce economic, social and bio-environmental pressure is, for example, implementation of the plans for development of tourism in the local, national and international scales. Tourism is counted as one of the cleanest industries of the current age which has attracted attention of governments and countries of the world. For our and many countries that still have not gotten enough experience in the development of the tourism industry, this sector is new activity. In order to be new charactor of this industry, there is examples of adverse effects, lack of proper planning and the negative consequences, which should be identified and fixed. Tourism analysts have long embraced resident perception surveys as the per-eminent means of measuring social impacts from tourism. This approach has received renewed impetus in recent years, largely due to the rising importance of participatory approaches that seek to include the voices of residents as an integral component of sustainable tourism planning. While there is considerable value in understanding tourism development from the point of view of residents, such an approach has serious limitations when employed as a stand-alone method as an objective measure of social impacts. The main objective of this research is to study the factors affecting improvement of situation of tourism industry in the Alborz province. In terms of method and nature of work, the present research is descriptive correlative type and, in terms of objective, is applied type. It’s a cross-sectional research according to the time. In this research, the standardized questionnaire has been used, and SPSS software has been employed. Findings of the research indicate that economic substructures, environmental stability, social-cultural sustainability, mental indexes based on perception and perspective of local society and political-security stability have been effective on the improvement of tourism situation of Alborz province. On the basis of Friedman test, factor of social-cultural stability is placed in the first rank and, following that, environmental stability, decrease of poverty and revenue distribution and political-security stability placed in the next ranks with less distance. Economic substructures and mental indexes based on perception and perspective of local society have been placed with higher distance in the fifth and sixth rank respectively.