Tourism Destination Development with Emphasis on Identifying the Dimensions of Tourist Trust with A Combined Approach

The purpose of this study was to develop a scale to measure the tourists trust in Guilan province as one of the most attractive tourist destinations in the country using the mixed method research. Qualitative data were collected using semi-structured interviews from twelve of academic experts, policy makers and tourism planners. Data analysis with the help of classic grounded theory, in two stages of substantive and theoretical coding leads to the extraction of 48 concepts, 19 sub-categories and finally 6 main categories of trust in tourism destination management, travel service agencies, employees of tourism service providers, residents of tourist destinations, other tourists and cyberspace content; as a constituent dimension of trust in the tourism industry. In the quantitative stage, based on the extracted components, a questionnaire was prepared and given to 389 tourists visiting different cities of Guilan province, and the validity of the model was confirmed once again using exploratory factor and confirmatory factor analysis.