Analysis of the challenges and strategies of tourism development in the rural areas, Case Study: The Villages around Dariyan dam in Paveh county

Tourism is one of the main drivers of rural development, which requires basic planning To actualize rural tourism, according to each region, the upcoming obstacles should be identified and suitable solutions should be adopted in line with them. The rural areas around Darian dam in Paveh county are known as one of the tourist areas which, in addition to natural capacities, hasspecial importance due to the creation of Darian dam and lake. The purpose of this research is to identify and analyze the challenges and strategies of tourism development in the rural areas around Darian Dam. The research method is applied in terms of purpose and in terms of the nature of data collection, it is a survey based on questionnaire and interview technique. The statistical population of the research is made up of the residents of three villages around the dam, including Hajij, Dariyan and Vera. Their population was equal to 1298 people and based on Cochran's formula, the sample size was calculated as 296 people. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed through the elite community and the reliability was also confirmed through Cronbach's alpha with a coefficient of 0.79. The result of the T-Tech test of a sample confirmed that the changes in tourism in the villages with the construction of the dam were at a significant level of less than 0.05 and the average was 2.79, which indicates the poor condition and lack of influence of the dam in the development of tourism in the villages. In addition, the result showed that local people have pointed out more than 21 challenges in the field of rural tourism development, which using factor analysis in five challenges including infrastructure (31.820 percent), management (21.314 percent), education and Supportive (18.832 percent), financial (7.399 percent) and environmental (5.241 percent) are categorized. The most important tourism development strategies in order to solve the challenges were identified as including the development of services and infrastructure (31.608 percent), investment and prosperity of economic activities (27.033 percent), and cultural and media activities (8.925 percent).