Investigating the Impact of Tourism on Sustainable Rural Livelihoods in Golestan Province

Improving the sustainable livelihoods of local people has received growing attention during the last two decades and has become one of the main goals of sustainable rural development. One of main approaches to improve rural livelihood is development of rural tourism. It is suggested that a sustainable livelihoods approach is useful¡ particularly in poor communities¡ because people gain their livelihoods through multiple activities rather than one formal job. Sustainable livelihoods are a people-centered paradigm which emphasizes people’s inherent capacities and knowledge and is focused on community level actions. Therefore tourism based activity as new livelihood approach must be incorporated into an existing system. Among other things¡ a sustainable livelihoods approach involves the development of short-term coping mechanisms and longer-term adaptive capacities that enhance the abilities of individuals and communities to deal with changing circumstances. Therefore it is useful to explore how tourism is and might be affected on rural livelihood. Hence current research was designed to investigate the impact of tourism on sustainable rural livelihoods in the Golestan province.
Material and The research design was semi-experiment and carried out based on survey strategy. Questionnaire tools and interview method were used in order to data gathering. The target population include 13180 heads of household within 37 tourism target village in Golestan Province which 170 heads of households from tourism village and 130 from non-tourist villages were selected. Classify random sampling method with appropriate allocation were used. Validity of the questionnaire based on the views of experts and the reliably of the questionnaire based on calculated Cronbakh-Alpha coefficient were confirmed. Data were analyzed using SPSS16 and Excel. 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) was used for all attributes. One-sample t-test¡ independent sample t-test¡ chi square test were used to data analyzing.
Discussion and The Golestan province and its villages are well used by national tourists during the peak spring and summer months. Economy of the village is based on agriculture (farming¡ livestock and horticulture) and services related to a growing tourism sector. Standard demographic questions were asked of each respondents¡ including age (with a mean age of 35.08 in tourism village and 38.83 in non-tourism village)¡ gender (about 85.9% men in tourism village and 83.9% in non-tourism village)¡ education (with a mean education of 9.7 in tourism village and 9.32 in non-tourism village)¡ household income (with a mean income of 14.189 million Tomans per year in tourism village and 10.390 in non-tourism village).
Results of one-sample t-test to assess livelihood showed that all five form of assets in two groups of village were lesser than average and in inappropriate position. The results of independent sample t-test showed that average means of physical¡ financial and overall assets in tourism villages were more than in non-tourism villages. Moreover the results of Friedman test revealed that some activities such “selling local dairy products”¡ “selling local costume” and “agronomy” had high importance as livelihood strategy in tourism villages. While in non-tourism village activities such agronomy¡ labor forcing¡ animal husbandry have high importance. The results of chi-square test indicated that most important vulnerable situation for positive trends in two groups of village are change of seasonality that encounters rural livelihoods with an unsecured position and the negative trends in rural tourism are critical trends predict that most important issues in the context of the vulnerable. The results of one-sample t-test to assess the livelihood impacts of tourism showed that except the environmental impacts¡ the other tourism impacts were in suitable position. Finally the most important economic impacts of tourism include “increase in prices of goods (such as food¡ housing¡ etc.)”¡ most important social impacts contain “presenting local culture” and “increased cultural trade-off with tourism” most important environmental impact include “increase in people awareness about the environment preservation” and finally most important institutional impacts include “increased pay attention from regional governments and other responsible stakeholder”.
Based on the findings¡ some main conclusions were drawn. First Livelihood of household in rural are general has slightly improved¡ however livelihood of tourism villages was slightly better than that of non-tourism villages. Another conclusion was the negative environmental impacts in tourism villages. In addition slow improve of livelihood were major concerns in the study area. Hence¡ the potentials for improving livelihood of household in both tourism and non-tourism villages include raising awareness¡ providing environmental training and increasing skill level related rural handicrafts¡ besides bringing improvements in other decision variables. Participation of local people in providing security and planning in tourism development¡ ban on entry into sensitive areas and extending rural market¡ fair and providing skill training are other recommendation of this research