Predictive study of sports tourism development in East Azerbaijan province based on tourism dimensions

The present study was descriptive-correlational and was conducted in the field. The statistical population of the study included all Nowruz tourists who traveled to East Azarbaijan province in 1398 and 305 people from this population were selected using cluster sampling formula for an unknown number of people by cluster and targeted random sampling. The research tool is a researcher-made questionnaire predicting the development of sports tourism, the face and content validity of which was confirmed by sports management professors and its reliability was estimated in a preliminary study on 30 samples with a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.82. Univariate regression was used to analyze the data using SPSS and Vikor software. The results showed that socio-cultural, environmental factors related to natural attractions, sports and infrastructure have a significant effect on predicting the factors affecting the development of sports tourism in East Azerbaijan province. Also, the results of Vikor ranking showed that from the perspective of experts, socio-cultural factors were ranked first and sports, environmental factors related to natural attractions and infrastructure were ranked second to fourth.