Agritourism: A Strategy in the Tourism Sustainable Development of Rural Communities (Case Study: Dulab Village, Kurdistan, Iran)

Several studies have shown that different forms of rural tourism can have positive and negative economic, social, and environmental effects on the region they occur in. This study aimed to evaluate the economic, social, and ecological effects of agritourism on the development of rural areas. Dulab village in Iran was selected as one of the tourism target villages.

First, the local community’s economic, social, and environmental needs (n=97) were extracted from the heads of households qualitatively. Then, agritourism was introduced to the local community as a development plan, and tourism’s positive and negative effects were assessed by factor analysis.

According to the present study, most villagers had economic incentives, including job creation, income increase, poverty reduction, creating complementary jobs, selling products without intermediaries, the welfare of the local community, and Empowering rural women to accept tourism and tourism development.

According to the results, since agriculture was the main source of income and occupation of rural people, agritourism was identified as a solution for sustainable development in rural communities, emphasizing the necessity of local community participation.