Mechanisms of Rural Tourism with Emphasis on the Natural Tourism: A Case Study of Heidarabad Village, Ilam County of Iran

The main objective of this study was to investigate mechanisms of rural tourism with emphasis on the natural tourism in the village of Heiderabad in Ilam county of Iran. It was an applied study in terms of the type and a quantitative research in nature while in terms of the method of data collection, it was considered as a survey. The population of this study consisted of three groups of experts, rural households, and tourists. For selecting the sample, in the the first group, the census method was used; and for the group of tourists, 100 people were selected in a convenience sampling method; as a whole, 250 people were studied. Main instrument of data gathering was a questionnaire, the validity of which was confirmed by a panel of experts in Ilam University, Islamic Azad University of Ilam Branch, and also experts in tourism. The results of exploratory factor analysis showed that in natural dimension, infrastructural-cultural mechanisms with %29.158 as well as welfare-services, informing and cultural-economic mechanisms were the most important mechanisms of rural tourism development.