Explaning the Development of Geotorism and the Creation of Geopark with an emphasis on Sustainable Torism Indices in the Dorfak and Deylaman Area of Guilan Province

Geotourism is one of the new concepts in geography and tourism literature that emphasizes the determination of special tourist sites from the point of view of geology and geomorphology. The focus of studies in this scientific branch is to determine the special tourist sites and to combine them with cultural, historical and ecological resources in order to achieve sustainable tourism development. In the meantime, the geospatial creation of the geoparks by the UNESCO Organization for the protection of Geological Heritage was presented with its special scientific management plans. Therefore, it can be argued that a sustainable and systematic development approach is one of the essential requirements for the effective management of the present era for the development of tourism industry globally. In this regard, the main objective of the study was to investigate the effect of the development of geotourism and the creation of geopark on sustainable tourism indicators. The research method was correlation and sampling method in this study was a holistic judgment sampling method and the sample size included 66 senior experts from the Office of the Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism in Guilan province. After collecting data with standard questionnaires, structural equation modeling technique with partial least squares approach was used to evaluate the relationships between variables and in general, all data analysis was performed using SPSS and PLS softwares. The results of the research hypotheses indicate the impact of geotourism and geopark on sustainable tourism indices in different dimensions (economic, social, cultural, political, technological, and ecological).