Explaining the Role of Tourism in Rural Development (A Case Study of Southwest Villages of Gillan)

Tourism creates significant economic,socio-cultural and environmental benefits for rural and less developed areas through income and infrastructure development,which ultimately contributes to rural development. The main purpose of this study is to explain the role of tourism in rural development southwest of Gilan. The statistical population of this study is the total number of households living in rural areas, from which 378 rural heads of households were selected as the sample size. The present study is an applied research that has been done by descriptive-analytical method.The results indicate that there is a direct relationship between tourism and rural development in the villages of the southwestern region of Gilan.Also, the results of multivariate analysis show independent variables (dimensions of tourism potential) on the rural development variable. The most important variable that explains the greatest variance of rural development in the region is the economic dimension. This variable alone explains 40.3% of the changes in the dependent variable and shows that the components of this dimension have a significant impact on rural development. The second variable is the physical-spatial dimension, which explains 20.2% of the variance changes. In the third and fourth stages, socio-cultural and environmental dimensions entered regression, which explained a significant percentage of the variance of rural development. With the entry of these two variables, the ability to explain the pattern in the last stage has reached 75.4%. In other words, the research model with four variables (dimension) has explained 75.4% of the changes in rural development.(R2 = 0.754)