Designing an Ecotourism Entrepreneurship Development Model with a Social Welfare Approach in Tourism Target Villages

Ecotourism entrepreneurship is one of the most important economic activities that are expanding and being attention by the world. In rural areas, this issue is more important because due to the recession in the agricultural sector and the problems facing rural communities, the alternative solution for policymakers is the development of rural businesses and taking advantage of ecotourism opportunities can rebuild the rural economy and social welfare. The purpose of this study is to design an ecotourism entrepreneurship development model with the approach of social welfare of tourism target villages, which was done by mixed exploratory method. In the first stage, using in-depth and semi-structured interviews and polling of key experts and key informants, the concepts were extracted and using the grounded theory method in three steps of open, axial and selective coding and using NVivo model software, a conceptual model was designed. In the second stage, the relationships between components and dimensions were investigated and tested using the structural equation modeling method using Smart-PLS software. The statistical population of this section was managers, entrepreneurs and experts in the field of ecotourism. The number of statistical samples using Krejcie Morgan table was estimated to be 248 people. Sampling at this stage was done by simple random method. The results show that there are positive and significant causal relationships between individual, marketing, economic, cultural, environmental and supportive factors with the development of ecotourism entrepreneurship. Finally, suggestions based on the research results were presented