Factors Affecting Rural Tourism Cluster Development (Case Study: Ashtaran Village, Touyserkan County)

Villages are full of new and undiscovered opportunities that can be explored in a timely manner to create opportunities and new businesses for the villagers. In this regard, those approaches are sustainable that, due to changes in technology and the market, constantly assess market and technological needs and provide a more appropriate employment model. To this end, development through business clusters has recently been considered by economic and industrial policies.

The main purpose of the study was to investigate factors affecting rural tourism cluster development via a quantitative approach. The statistical population consisted of two groups of experts in Hamadan province with 21 individuals and 360 rural households. A total of 185 rural households were randomly selected using the Krejcie and Morgan table. This research was an applied research that investigated the contribution of each independent variable in explaining the dependent variable (rural tourism cluster development) using structural equation modeling through Smart PLS6 software.

The results showed that in the structural model of research, the highest effect (β=0.420) belonged to institutions on rural tourism development and the relationship was positive and significant. In total, 56 percent of the dependent variable of tourism development in Ashtaran village is explained by four factors: institutions, tourism infrastructure, economic capacities and tourism services.