Identify Entrepreneurial Opportunities in Rural Tourism

TThe purpose of this research is to identify the entrepreneurial opportunities for the rural tourism industry in Mazandaran province in order to answer the question of what the appropriate fields of investment and rural tourism potentials in Mazandaran province are. The methodology used in this research is of a descriptive nature and is based on developmental purposes. Accordingly, a combined approach was used in order to conduct this research and opportunity identification as well. As a research tool in the qualitative research section, semi-structured interviews with managers, economics activists in tourism industry and university scholars of the province were used to identify the livelihood opportunities of Mazandaran province. At this stage, nine experts from the province were identified by a targeted method and the semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data. After completing the interview process, the first stage of the open source codification was based on oral statements and in the second stage, the coding was done axially and 17 axial codes were extracted. In the third stage of dimension identification, five dimensions including gardening and greenhouses, breeding and catching fish, packing and conversion industries, livestock and poultry, and cultural and residential dimensions were identified. Considering the qualitative aspect of the research, sampling method was done purposefully in this study. Regarding its quantitative aspect, based on the model extracted from the interviews and using a snowball sampling method, a questionnaire consisting of 55 questions was designed and provided to the statistical community of the research. Data were analyzed by a PLS software, and the findings of this study showed that cultural and residential opportunity was identified as the first rural tourism opportunity in Mazandaran province.