Explaining the Effects of Geotourism on the Development of Entrepreneurship in City- Village Ghori-Ghalhe with Structural Equation Approach

As today entrepreneurship is regarded as the economic development engine, development planners and policy makers are going to improve entrepreneurship through different ways among the members of various communities. Due to the high capacity of tourism sample areas, Such as Ghori-Ghalhe Cave in attracting tourists, analyzing the effects of tourism on entrepreneurship index can lead to reinforcement of two key lever of development (Tourism and entrepreneurship) in host communities. This study is a descriptive-analytic research and, in terms of purpose, is regarded as an applied one. The statistical population is composed of all heads of households living in the rural town of Quri-Qalhe in which 200 samples were selected. The main research tool is an author-made questionnaire and its reliability and validity were proved in compliance with principles of scientific research. The results showed that five factors of economic effects, increasing the value of assets, environmental-infrastructure, culture and population are the most important geotourism effects on residents of the study area, being able to explain about %72 of the variance of dependent variable. The results showed that mean score of entrepreneurship among households studied is 3/32 which is higher than average. Finally, the results of final model of fitted structural equation for geotourism effect (as the independent variable of studdy) on entrepreneurship development (as dependent variable) among households of Quri-Qalhe showed that geotourism , at a confidence level of 99%, has a significant effect on the development of entrepreneurship and its indicators so that the total effect of geotourism on entrepreneurship in the study area is 0/475 with determination coefficient of 0.266.