An Analysis of Kashan Tourism Drivers with Emphasis on Social Capital Performance

The concept of social capital has been proposed as a cross-disciplinary concept in social and economic analysis of community development, especially tourism development. Thus, the research was conducted to investigate the role and impact of social capital on tourism development in Kashan.

he present article is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of method. The statistical population of the study is 308476 citizens of Kashan. The sample size was calculated using the Cochran's formula to 322 people. Data collection is a combination of descriptive and field information. The research tool is a researcher-made questionnaire with 85 variables. The software used is SPSS and AMOS, which are used for t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient and structural equation modeling. The validity of the research instrument has been confirmed by experts and its reliability has been confirmed by using Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.821.

The results of t-test with a significance level of less than 0/05 evaluated the situation of social capital in Kashan as appropriate. The result of using structural equation modeling to identify the most effective factor in explaining social capital among Kashan citizens indicates the highest load The factor is 0/99 for the social awareness index. The most important factors driving tourism development is the comfort index with a regression weight of 0.94. Achieving a correlation coefficient of 0/34 at the 99% confidence level indicates a direct and positive relationship between social capital and tourism development.

Confirming the relationship between improving social capital and tourism development emphasizes the need for planning to build trust in the performance of government employees among local communities and build public trust in social institutions in order to strengthen social capital as a key driver in improving and developing tourism in Kashan.