Developing the Host Society's Satisfaction Model of Tourism Development (Case Study: Residents of Lahijan Town)

Today, the tourism industry is one of the most important activities of income and employment generation at the international level. Meanwhile, the important groups of stakeholders in this domain are communities and residents in tourism destinations that both are much affected by this industry and affect its development. In this research, we tried to examine the main factors affecting the level of local communities’ satisfaction with tourism development using the path analysis method and the test of a conceptual model extensively used in literature. The main variables due to research questions are cultural, economic, social and environmental dimensions in host societies and the positive and negative perceived effects by local residents. Also, attempts have been made to determine how these variables affect each other, and their effects on the level of host community’s satisfaction with tourism. Factor analysis was used to investigate the validity, reliability and identification of the main influential variables. In order to investigate the relationship between the hidden variables of this research on each other, structural equation modeling was used. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 23 and AMOS 18 software. Results indicate that one of the important factors in satisfaction’s measure, is the social dimension is social satisfaction with the effect coefficient of 0.9, and the positive perceived effects have a direct effect on satisfaction with the effect of 0.774; that is, the social effects and, consequently, the positive effects that local residents perceive have been affecting the local communities and encouraging them to participate in activities related to tourism development