Analyzing the Socio-economic and Environmental Effects of Rural Tourism (Case Study: Navareh Village)

Tourism and tourism industry are important parts of sustainable development and known as a tool for improving people’s livelihoods in most developing countries. Rural tourism is now considered as a part of the great industry of tourism as it plays a motive force in the economic growth as well as social development of villages. This industry provides a leading opportunity, can result in the regional economic diversity and providing productive employment opportunities on the basis of the potentials existing in the village, can incur increases in local incomes and population maintenance in the village. Nowadays, one of the most important rural development strategies is tourism as it can help reducing poverty and associates livelihoods opportunities because of tourism’s ability to generate jobs and support income. Iran has great capability and potential in the field of this multi-dimensional industry having more than 75 thousand villages, that some of them posse wonderful historic and natural perspectives. Obviously, rural tourism has many economic and social effects such as preventing the flow of rural migration, raising income levels of rural households and creating demand for agricultural products and handicrafts in countries like Iran. Therefore, recognizing these factors would help better planning for tourism industry development in rural areas. This study aims to analyze socio-economic and environmental effects of rural tourism in Navare village which is located in Kurdistan province with its beautiful environmental view and ecological capacity. Evidence shows that rural tourism in this region has special feature of natural tourism enjoying beautiful environmental perspectives so it could help achieving development goals in this area. With the prevalence of tourism in the province, the development of tourism industry has moderately facilitated local economy and increased the employment opportunity. The village has about 980 residents with 330 households so it was selected as the study area of this research. The main instrument of data collection from the field was a questionnaire that initially its validity and reliability was obtained. Studied population consisted of 120 rural households that selected from total population of the study. The questionnaire’s validity confirmed by a panel of specialist and faculty members and its reliability was measured by a pre-test of questionnaire using Coronbach’s alpha in which it was 0/85 that was acceptable. The acquired data and information analyzed using SPSS software. With regard to the goals of the study, the research method is descriptive and casual analysis fundamentally. A confirmatory factor analysis was used and the structural equation model using the LISREL software also applied to measure different effects of tourism section in the area. LISREL is one SEM technique which combines the concepts of both factor analysis and path analysis and it is appropriate to analyze the data in social and behavioral research fields. The LISREL can simultaneously process multiple sets of variable relationships to estimate the parameters in an entire system of linear equations in a model. Discussions and In order to assess social dimension 10 parameters, economic dimension 15 parameters, and environmental dimension 14 parameters were considered. Although, research findings and observations generally indicate lack of necessary infrastructure including residential locations, catering, recreation and tourism development in the area but the area has high natural capacity for eco-tourism. In the Lisrel model of analysis, Fitness indices are placed into three main groups including: Goodness of Fit index, Comparative Fit Index, and Parsimonious Goodness of Fit index. This study examined variables in the three intended main groups (social- economic and environmental) and then summarized by developing a conceptual model for validation of structural equation models by entering data into the desired end. The model was examined using intended indicators to evaluate three kinds of indices which above mentioned. Research findings reveal that (AGFI = 0.91, GFI= 0.92), (NNFI = 0.91, CFI= 0.90), and (RMSEA= 0.075 and = 1.818). The important factors that have effected rural tourism were social factors such as inceasing people’s awareness, good relationship with tourists, decreaing local solidairty. The next effective factors were in order economic (people imcome and increasing products price) and environmental factors such as environment destruction and polution. Based on the results obtained from factor analysis, three groups of factors including economic, social, and environmental have affected the development of rural tourism in the study area. Among these factors, "social factor" with 0/55 Coefficient effects and 0/30 percent of the total variance, has explained the greatest amount of variance accounted for significant share of the effects of rural tourism. Therefore, the planners and policymakers of rural tourism in order to develop the tourism industry in this area, they should pay attention to socio-economic, and environmental indicators mainly education of local people on tourism absorption, marketing their own local products, quality of their products, introducing village old history to interested people, improving and conserving local environment for development of the area and similar areas.