Investigating the impact of community-based tourism on development of rural communities from the perspective of the local community: A Case Study of Paveh Tourist Villages

Community-oriented tourism seeks to create economic benefits, preserve natural resources, protect the local culture, and improve the local community's quality of life, so that needs of the present and future generations are met. This type of tourism development would bear maximum benefits if the local communities' infrastructural potentials are strengthened, and the rural community's ability to use them is improved. Therefore, this descriptive-analytical study set out to examine the impact of community-oriented tourism on the development of rural communities from the perspective of the local community. To this end, 365 questionnaires were administered to the target tourism villages (namely Hajij, Shamshir, Nasmeh, and Khaneghah) located in Paveh city, using the SPSS software to analyze the collected data. The results showed that community-based tourism promoted economic, social, cultural, and environmental indicators, leading to rural development. Moreover, the regression analysis on the intended variables suggested economic indicators played the highest role in local community development, followed by social, cultural, and environmental indicators, respectively. Kendall's tau-b test results also proved a significant correlation between local community development and community-based tourism.