Investigating the Application of Geotourism Interpretation System’s Dimensions and Components for Developing a Coneptual Model in the Qeshm Island UNESCO Global Geopark, Iran

The purpose of this study was to develop a model for geo-interpretation in the Qeshm Island UNESCO Global Geopark of Iran.To investigate the application of dimensions and components of the geo-interpretation system and to develop a conceptual model, Sadry et al., 2021 framework based on the authentic methods in the globe (the ideal situation) was considered. For this purose and based on the literature review, seven dimensions including: Instructor (interpreter), content, tools, place, principles, practices and audience accompany with its 30 components, adopted from aformentioned study, was used. Descriptive-survey method was used to investigate the current application of the dimensions and components of the geo-interpretation system in the management of Qeshm Island UNESCO Global Geopark. This was an applied research conducted with a quantitative approach.The statistical population of the research was the visitors of Qeshm Geopark.A researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect data and were distributed in March and April 2019 (Iranian Nowruz 1398) by convenience sampling method.In order to analyze the data in the descriptive statistics part of the research (mean, standard deviation, ...), and in the inferential statistics part of the research according to the type of data, Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistical tests and methods of structural equation models, goodness of fit indices and factor analysis were used. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (applying the version 3.3 of SmartPLS software) and one-sample t-test (applying the version 26 of SPSS software) were used, as well.In general, the parameters of the evaluated model were acceptable and the goodness of fit of the model was very good (99 out of 100, the opinions of 30 relevant experts were used).The results indicated that the current situation in the application of dimensions and components is less than the average level and the conditions are far from the ideal situation.The results also showed that in the current situation, the application of the educator/interpreter dimension is higher than others and the tool is the lowest one.Finally, the proposed solutions to improve the seven dimensions, and move towards the desired situation in the Qeshm Island UNESCO global geopark have been mentioned.