Investigating the challenges and obstacles of ecotourism resorts from the perspective of experts and stakeholders (Case study: rural areas of Khor and Biabank

In this article, we want to investigate the barriers and challenges of ecotourism resorts from the perspective of experts and stakeholders using the Delphi method and confirmatory factor analysis. The study is an applied work in terms of the purpose and methodology of the paper descriptive-analytical. The statistical population consists of two groups including experts and stakeholders. The sample size for the first group was selected using snowball or chain sampling of 28 people. The second group consists of owners of ecotourism resorts and residents. The case study was five villages in Egypt, Garmeh, Mehrjan, Bayaz, and Iraj. These villages have a population of 1384 people and 476 families. To generalize the information of the whole statistical population using the Cochran sampling method from a total of 476 households, the sample size is equal to 330 at random.Data analysis was carried out using SPSS software version 23. The Delphi technique was used to identify the challenges of eco-lodges. The results in the qualitative part indicated that the most important challenges facing ecotourism resorts are structural and managerial factors, policy, financial and economic factors, individual personality, research, and information. In the quantitative part, using confirmatory factor analysis, there are five factors: financial and economic factors, managerial and structural factors, weakness of laws and comprehensive policy-making, research and information, and individual and personality factors that 73 Explain 78% of the total variance.