Designing a Model for Promoting sustainable Agri-tourism based on Organizational Components (Studied case: Caspain Sea Coastal Provinces)

The main purpose of this study is to explain the organizational components of sustainable agri-tourism promotion and design a model for promoting this type of tourism in the Caspian Sea Coastal Provinces. The statistical population of this study was all experts of Organization of Jihad-e-Agriculture of Guilan, Mazandaran and Golestan Provinces (N = 288). A questionnaire was used to collect the data. Structural equation modeling using LISREL 8.5 and SPSS software were used to data analysis. The results of this study confirm the positive and significant relationship between the components related to inner and outer of the organization extracted from the theoretical foundations of research with the development of agri-tourism as one of the multifunctional agricultural instances. The adoption of an entrepreneurial approach to create new values for agricultural stakeholders, changing organizational strategy from monofunctional to multifunctional agriculture, strengthening organizational links with all institutions involved in the process of developing a variety of non-commodity outputs, and designing policies encouraging innovative approaches at the local level, in small and micro-scale farms, are important requirements for moving towards implementing multi-functional agriculture as a new approach of sustainable rural development.