Examining the impact of social entrepreneurship on economic development, emphasizing the role of rural tourism as a mediator (Case study: North Khorasan Province)

Nowadays, the probability of occurrence of the social entrepreneurship as a social and humanitarian mission is increasing through various types of businesses, including types of tourism. The present research was conducted to analyze the mediating role of rural tourism in the impact of social entrepreneurship on economic development in North Khorasan province.

This study follows a descriptive research method and is practical in terms of purpose and survey type in terms of the data collection method. Moreover, SPSS software was used for descriptive statistics, and Lisrel software was utilized to test research hypotheses. The statistical population of the research was ten target villages and tourist destinations of North Khorasan province, which were selected through the purposeful sampling method. The tool for collecting information related to the research variables was an interview-based questionnaire, whose content and construct validities were checked. The reliability of the questionnaire was also confirmed by Cronbach's alpha test as higher than 0.7 for all three variables of the current research.

The obtained results indicate that the variable of social entrepreneurship has a direct and significant effect on the variables of economic development and rural tourism. Also, the rural tourism variable positively affects the economic development variable. On the other hand, the social entrepreneurship variable, through the mediator role of the rural tourism variable, has an indirect and significant effect on economic development.

The key result is that the emergence of social entrepreneurship in villages with tourism potential leads to economic prosperity in both direct and indirect ways.

Most of the previous studies have paid attention to the direct and indirect social and cultural effects of social entrepreneurship, but in the present research, these effects were investigated in the economic development of villages with tourism potential.