The Consequences of Tourism Development on Empowerment of Communities in Rural Areas (Case study: villages of central district of Natanz)

In rural areas, tourism as one of the most popular forms of tourism can, lead to economic growth and the diversification of rural activities, on the other hand, by attracting human resource surpluses, to create employment and generate income for villagers, thus giving them an opportunity to develop All-round. In recent years and in line with tourism development in rural districts, study of the effect and action of rural tourism has been a productive domain for interdisciplinary research. One of the subjects is investigating the tourism effects on empowerment of rural societies. Accordingly, aim of the study is to investigate the role and the effect of rural tourism on empowering of local society in social, cultural and economic aspects in villages of central district of Natanz.

 The study is an applied research and from the point of view of the method and nature, it is a descriptive-analytic one. The method of collecting the data was a combination of library and field methods. Data collecting tool is a researcher made questionnaire including 85 general and special questions. Validity of the tool is face validity and was confirmed by experts and also was structural by means of factor analysis and its reliability was set by Cronbach’s Alpha about 0.854. Statistical population of the study were the rural inhabitants of central district of Natanz (N=4046). The sample size was 354 people according to Morgan table. Statistical analyses were conducted by SPSS software, Binominal tests, chi-square, Mann-Whitney, Wilcoxon, T student, Fisher, Manova, Anova, factor analysis and cluster analysis. The Maps was made by ArcGIS software.

 The results show that the average of general empowerment in tourism villages with amount of 3.34 is in a higher place than non-tourism villages with general empowerment average of 3.15. The results of T-test, according to the average amounts of the sample 3.48 and 3.34 for cultural empowerment and social empowerment respectively and high amounts of T student 11.574 and 8.280 which were the result in zero for the assumed significant level of zero, confirm the effect of tourism on cultural and social empowerment in level of 0.05. Level of significant of 0.155 for tourism effect on economic empowerment aspect, has denied the effect of tourism on this aspect. Also, the statistical amount of empowerment comparison in Fisher test is 5.967 with freedom degrees of 1 and 298 in form of triple aspects among tourism and non-tourism villages. Hence, the difference between general empowerment among tourism and non-tourism villages is significant. Zero amounts of significant level for Wilcoxon tests among empowerment aspects show that these aspects have significant differences two by two. Consequently, cultural empowerment with average of 3.484 is in the highest level and economic empowerment with average of 2.98 is in the lowest level. The results of clustering the variables demonstrate that cultural and social aspects are closer to each other based on conceptual theme.

According to the findings, empowerment status is better in tourist villages. In general, cultural empowerment is most and economic empowerment is the least. It seems that the situation with regard to economic empowerment seems not to be favorable; especially the investment empowerment has a bad situation. In fact, the presence of the tourist, although beneficial in terms of employment and income, was not as effective in the field of investment (as a more radical variable).The lack of meaningful economic effects of tourism on the part of the local community is due to the fact that the villagers expected to receive direct and tangible income from tourism and less attention to its multiplier effects. In any case, social and cultural empowerment in both types of villages is at a higher level than economic empowerment.According to the results of the research, setting up and providing legal support for private sector investment in tourism development in the studied villages, Development of basic skills for employment in the tourism sector in cooperation with the technical and vocational organization with the aim of creating job opportunities and income generation, Training on entrepreneurial skills with a native-oriented approach, Teaching social and communication skills to communicate with tourists and influential institutions in tourism, Recognizing and introducing the attractions of rural tourism using mass media, social networks, Cyberspace and interaction with tourism agencies, supporting cultural and local patterns and values as the main capital for tourism development, Increasing the knowledge and knowledge about tourism and holding local and regional ceremonies and celebrations with a tourist attraction approach can deepen the tourism impacts of the study in the study area and lead to rural development.