Livelihood Foundations and Villagers’ Insight into E-Tourism: A Case Study of Rural Area of Rudbar County

Based on sustainable livelihood approach, livelihood foundations form the basis of villagers’ ability and power to interfere in their individual and social destiny because they determine and direct the perception, expectations and activities of individuals and families living in rural areas. According to the theory of sustainable livelihood, to end livelihood crises, methods such as tourism development should be adopted in rural areas. But in the present era, it is rural electronic tourism that accelerates and promotes the achievement of economic, social and environmental goals of sustainable rural development. The current research aimed to investigate and analyze the status of livelihood foundations, the e-tourism project, and villagers’ insight in the villages under study. The research is an applied, mixed (quantitative-qualitative) one. The data were collected through documentary studies (books, articles, and statistics) and field research (questionnaires and interviews). Sixteen indicators and 78 variables involved in the formation of livelihood capital were identified and based on them, a Likert-scale questionnaire was developed and given to the research sample (311 households). In the qualitative phase, phenomenological approach was used for sampling, then, in-depth interviews were conducted with 36 villagers until theoretical saturation. To analyze the data, SPSS, Excel, MAXQDA and ArcGIS software were used. In the quantitative phase, using TOPSIS model, in the first step, it was found that natural and social capitals had a favorable status compared to other assets. In the second step, the status of livelihood foundations in the villages was examined separately, based on which Shahrebijar, Shirkoh, and Halimejan were ranked first to third with coefficients of 0.654, 0.546, and 0.526, respectively. In the next step and in the qualitative phase, the villagers interpret their understanding of electronic tourism as visiting, advertising and marketing, online shopping, eliminating middlemen and new businesses. Furthermore, based on the surveys, it was found that the villagers with less livelihood capitals have a different vision than the villagers having livelihood capitals.