Definition the Role of Tourism on Sustainable Rural Development (Case Study: Chahar Farzieh Village of Bandar Anzali)

In recent years, the diverse functions of rural tourism in order to advance the goals of sustainable rural development have attracted much attention. Therefore, understanding the effects of rural tourism on various indicators of sustainable rural development can be useful in achieving the goals of rural development projects. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of tourism development on social, cultural, economic, physical and environmental indicators of villages in Chahar Farizeh rural area of Bandar Anzali city. Moro information needed for research is obtained through documentary sources and field studies. The statistical population includes the villagers of Chahar Farizeh village. According to Cochran's formula, 373 residents of selected villages were selected by random sampling method to complete the questionnaire. Cronbach's alpha test of 0.895 was used for reliability of the questionnaire and multivariate regression, variance and Pearson correlation coefficient were used for data analysis. Findings showed that the development of rural tourism had a positive effect on economic, socio-cultural and physical indicators of the villages in the study area, but its effect on the environment was negative. The results of regression test showed the effect of tourism development on all studied variables. Also, the results of intra - group and inter - group variance test showed that there is no significant difference between villages in terms of environmental factor, but in relation to the other three factors, there is a significant difference between Villages were observed