Assessment of the role of nature tourism attraction on development of the Baghbahadoran tourism and analysis of its effective indicators

The purpose of this study is to evaluate effective and appropriate strategies for ecotourism development in rural areas by using structural equation modeling. The research method is Descriptive- Analytical and the main tool for data collection is a researcher-made questionnaire. the Statistic population included experts, the local community and tourists of Baghbahadoran region with a population of 47,249 members. The sample size was calculated by Sample Power software to 254 cases. For analyzing the results of the questionnaire, various descriptive- inferential methods like T-test, ANOVA in SPSS software were used and for modeling, fitting and relation test, structural equation modeling in AMOS software were applied. The findings of one sample t-test indicate that ecotourism attractions in the region are most effective in attracting tourists and participation of the private section is the most appropriate strategy in tourism development. The results of structural equation modeling show that welfare facilities with 0.91 loading factor is most influential factor for tourism development planning. Loading factor of 0.90 for facilitating communication puts the developing planning tourism in second place and lodging services with 0.86 loading factor and information advertising with 0.85 loading factor placed in the third and fourth rankings, respectively