Prioritization of Rural Ecotourism Target Villages in the Forest Area of Babolakrood Watershed

Rural ecotourism based on scientific principles and criteria is one of the essential approaches in the process of achieving sustainable development and preventing the waste of time and capital.The research method is descriptive-analytical and its purpose is to prioritize the villages targeted for rural ecotourism in the forest area of Babolakrood watershed in Mazandaran province. In the study, Delphi method to identify rural ecotourism criteria, Entropy technique to determine their weight and multi-criteria decision models such as TOPSIS, ElECTER and VIKOR to prioritize villages in the forest area of Babolakrood watershed in terms of ecotourism potential rural in 2019. The findings of the study identified and customized four environmental, economic, social and technical criteria and 44 indicators to evaluate rural ecotourism in case stuady. The results of prioritization of 17 villages in the forest region of Babolakrood watershed showed that Khalil Kola, Kharkak, Ari, Kalikola and Firozjah villages respectively are five villages with high potential for rural ecotourism, with the highest final average. Also, the results showed that the application of different multi-criteria models leads to different ranking of options, so in order to reach a consensus and a more comprehensive ranking of options, the triple integration method has been used. The results showed that VIKOR model in comparison with other models provides more suitable results for prioritizing the villages of the region in terms of rural ecotourism potential. Therefore, we suggested that the target ecotourism villages considered in the management programs of rural ecotourism projects in Mazandaran province,Savadkuh city.