Designing a Model of Rural Ecotourism Entrepreneurship Development with a Qualitative Approach

Today, ecotourism entrepreneurship is presented as a strategy for sustainable rural development by creating job opportunities based on the use of local resources in a sustainable way and emphasizing on the internal development of the village. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to design a model for rural ecotourism entrepreneurship development in Dezful township. This research is of qualitative type and in terms of implementation method, it is a mixture of qualitative content analysis and Delphi technique. At first, concepts were extracted using theoretical foundations and research background using qualitative content analysis method. Then, using the Delphi technique and the opinions of experts about these indicators, a consensus was reached. The Delphi panel consisted of 30 academics, organizational, and local experts selected by snowball sampling. After three rounds of Delphi, experts agreed on 87 indicators in the form of 11 components and the rural ecotourism entrepreneurship development model in Dezful township was theoretically approved. The results show that the combination of social responsibility, environmental responsibility, growth and development through ecotourism and ecotourism innovations and creativity provide the development of rural ecotourism entrepreneurship. Also, physical-infrastructural factor, economic factor, educational and information factor, institutional factor, environmental factor, socio-cultural factor and individual factor were identified as the most important factors affecting the development of rural ecotourism entrepreneurship.