Evaluate of Factors Affecting Empowerment of Tourism Development (Case Study: West Azarbaijan province)

Tourism as the largest social movement, associated with cultural, economic and spatial consequences. Therefore, making the more efficient of the tourism development and promoting its positive consequences, it needs to understanding and putting especial attention to the empowerment. The aim of this research is the study of effective factors on empowerment of the tourism development in West Azerbaijan Province. This study naturally is "descriptive - analytic" and objectively is “applicable" and is in line with answering to this question: Is the empowerment of “local communities (of participation dimension), human resource (the decision makers and planners), and competitiveness of tourism destinations" components effective in empowering of tourism development in the West Azerbaijan province? The statistical populations studied in this research are cultural heritage, handicrafts and tourism experts in the West Azerbaijan province. Due to the expansion of research range and lack of detailed knowledge about the number of population studied, using cluster and randomized sampling method, totally, 100 subjects selected as sample. To analyze the data, descriptive statistical methods was used and to test of research hypothesis in the inferential statistic, the chi-square tests (chi-square) were used. The results showed that empowerment components of the local community, human resources (the decision makers and planners), and competitiveness of tourism destinations have significant relationship with the empowerment of tourism development and among them "empowerment of human resources (the decision makers and planners)" have the most impact on tourism development in West Azerbaijan province.