Analysis of Effective and Promoting Factors of Rural Tourism Development from the Perspective of Villagers (Case Study: Hiran District, Astara Township)

Rural tourism is a new strategy to achieve rural development, which plays a major role in empowering local people and diversifying economic growth through creating complementary activities and transforming these areas. The current research has been done with the approach of the driving factors of rural tourism. The research is descriptive-analytical and practical in terms of purpose. The required data were obtained through documentary and field methods. The statistical population of the research is 12 villages above 20 households in Hiran district in the central part of Astara township with a population of 2509 people and 798 households. The sample size was estimated to be 260 people based on Cochran's formula, and the number of samples was distributed in villages according to their population. Environmental, managerial, economic and social factors were used to examine the issue. Based on the qualitative content analysis of the collected data through the review of sources and interviews, key concepts were extracted from the text of notes and interviews, and during open coding, 30 effective factors of translation were identified. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by experienced experts and the reliability coefficient was estimated at 0.80 based on Cronbach's alpha. SPSS25 and Lisrel software were used for analysis. The results show that the highest factor load among the environmental factor is the flora and fauna index (0.88), in the management factor is the incentive policies index (0.76), in the economic factor is the villa construction and second home index (0.88) and in the social factor, it is dedicated to the comfort facilities in the village (0.89) in the field of tourism.