Study of the Effects of Tourism on Rural Development from Rural Households Viewpoint

The aim of this research is to study tourism effects on rural development. Tourismwas one of the main and controversial challenges during several past decades. In this respect، rural tourism could provide many chances with making employment، improvement rural income and preserve historical، cultural heritage. It could also play an effective role on revival and renewal of rural areas and substantial development. Tourism is of high economical importance; therefore، familiarity with host community as a producer of tourism product is also important. Mahan villages in Kerman Township are facing with same problems as other villages in Iran. Some of these problems are: high vulnerability of economy and instability of income resources، climatic fluctuations، pressure increase on environmental basic resources، employment restrictions and lack of different job opportunities in rural areas، hidden and obvious unemployment، increase of poverty and etc. we analyzed obtained data using the K-S test، one sample t test and a Kruskal Wallis Test. according to rural sustainable development pattern، using the tourism capabilities in rural areas are one of the exit strategies to these condition. The purpose of this research is to enabling another income resource beside industry and agriculture، because ecological restriction on the region، increasing level of population، lack of employment and rural recession and etc، has increased irregular immigration of regional rural. The method of this research is based on analytical- description and completing questionnaire in two different group of host community with 190 households head in six touristy villages of Mahan section. The obtained data from this research was concluded that on basis of host community tourism effects on rural habitat development of Mahan District are higher than that of assumed mean (74. 18 versus 66). The result showed that the Mahan villages in Kerman Township have a high capability of attracting tourism given that the tourism structures are needed to reinforce the rural tourism to be properly provided.