Investigating the intention of beach seine cooperatives fishermen to participate in fisheries tourism in the Caspian Sea Coastline

Fisheries tourism is a relatively new style of tourism in many countries, which has brought many benefits to both sectors by merging the tourism and fishing sectors. To create and develop fisheries tourism, the participation of the local community, including the fishermen community, as one of the most important groups related to fisheries tourism, is considered an effective tool and an important element. Among the most important prerequisites for the participation of communities in the development of fisheries tourism is the intention of these communities to participate. Therefore, this research was conducted with the general purpose of investigating the intention of fishermen to participate in fisheries tourism and the factors affecting it. This research is practical in terms of purpose, is descriptivr - correlational in terms of analysis, and has been carried out through survey relying on the theory of planned behavior. The statistical population in this research was fishermen who are members of beach seine cooperatives in the Caspian Sea Coastline(N=9594). Due to the distribution of fishermen in the three provinces of Golestan, Mazandaran and Gilan, the sample size of the study was determined to be 209 fishermen and the samples were selected using the multi-stage random sampling method. Data collection was done using a researcher-made questionnaire, which was designed based on the theoretical framework of the research and based on the The Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior (DTPB). The results showed that fishermen who are members of beach seine cooperatives in the Caspian Sea Coastline have a high intention to accept and participate in the implementation of fisheries tourism. The results also showed that participation in the program "watching the local fish markets by fisheries tourists" has the highest level of intention among all fisheries tourism activities among the fishermen of beach seine cooperatives. They also expressed their intention to participate in programs for "watching beach seine fishing and throwing nets". "staying in the house of local people and being familiar with local fishing communities (cultures and customs)" and cooperation to "participation in local festivals related to fisheries" were other activities that fishermen were interested in participating them.