Role of Tourists’ Perceptions in Satisfaction and Loyalty to Rural Tourism Destination (The Case of Javaherdeh Village)

The Impressive growth of rural tourism destinations and the need for competition and success have doubled the need for managers to assess tourist loyalty. The present study, considering these cases, has investigated the formation of satisfaction and loyalty of rural tourists based on their perceptions (quality, image, value and experience) in the Javaherdeh village. The statistical population of the study was domestic tourists of Javaherdeh village of Ramsar. The sample size was estimated to be 420 people and non-random sampling method was available. An electronic questionnaire was used to collect data. Data analysis was performed at two levels of descriptive and covariance based structural equations modeling using SPSS26 and LISREL8.54 software. Findings showed that the variables of overall satisfaction, perceived experience, perceived quality, perceived value and perceived image, respectively, had the most to the least effect on the loyalty of tourists to the rural destination of Javaherdeh Ramsar. Also, from the tourists' point of view, climate and landscape as unique features, lead to a positive perceived experience as well as littering, destruction and degradation of the originality of the body and architecture of the building and the lack of an integrated service system leading to perceived experience of tourists. Based on these findings, the most important suggestion is to integrated network of tourism services (transportation, accommodation, catering, attractions, tours, souvenir shops) and public services in the form of a multilingual application or interactive website to facilitate design in tourist information, reservations and marketing communications. Based on other findings, finally, practical suggestions were presented.