Investigating the challenges and obstacles of rangeland ecotourism from the perspective of experts and stakeholders(Case study of rural rangelands in Isfahan province)

The purpose of this article is to investigate the obstacles and challenges of rangeland ecotourism from the perspective of experts and stakeholders using the Delphi method and confirmatory factor analysis.The present research is applied research in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical research in nature and has a quantitative qualitative approach. The statistical population of the study consists of two groups. The first group included experts and the second group included stakeholders. The sample size for the first group was selected using snowball or chain sampling of 28 people and the second group is based on the statistics of about 1000 people in rural areas of Isfahan province, which was determined based on Cochran's formula of 276 people.Data analysis was performed using SPSS software version 23. In order to identify the existing challenges of rangeland ecotourism in rural communities of Isfahan province, Delphi technique was used. The results in the qualitative part of the research indicated that the most important challenges facing rangeland ecotourism are structural and managerial factors, policy-making, financial and economic factors, individual-personality, research and information. In the quantitative part, using confirmatory factor analysis, there are 5 factors, which are: financial and economic factors, managerial and structural factors, weakness of laws and comprehensive policy, research and information, and individual and personality factors, respectively, which is 78.73. Explains the percentage of total variance.