Recognizing and Prioritizing the Cultural-Social Enabler Elements and Dimensions of Tourism Industry (case study: Mazandaran Province)

Today, as one of the fastest growing economic sectors , tourism has become one of the drivers of socio-economic development in many cities in the north and south. The aim of the current study was to identify and prioritize dimensions and elements of the cultural-social enabler of the tourism industry, which was done qualitatively-quantitatively.

In literature review, scientific articles and researches, research plans of organizations and studies of previous researchers on the research subject, through a systematic review, were selected. In the validation section, the statistical population included professors of public administration, tourism and urban management in higher education centers and senior managers of the country's cultural heritage, handicrafts and tourism organization and in the quantitative part, they were members of the faculty and high and middle managers of the organization of cultural heritage, handicrafts and tourism in Mazandaran province. In literature review, 24 researches were screened and finalized, and 20 and 35 people were selected, respectively, using the purposeful sampling method for Delphi techniques and the hierarchical analysis process. In the validation section, the data was analyzed by applying the Delphi technique with a semi-structured survey checklist (first round) and structured survey (second, third and fourth rounds) using SPSS software and in the quantitative section, it was analyzed by implementing a matrix questionnaire using EXPERT CHOICE software. To determine the validity in validation and quantitative section, the content of the survey checklist and matrix questionnaire were approved by five academic and organizational experts in terms of comprehensibility, clarity, and expressiveness and to determine the reliability of the checklist, the correlation coefficient of 0.85 was calculated with the retest method. In the quantitative stage, reliability was confirmed by determining the inconsistency rate in the range between 0.01 and 0.03.

The results showed that cultural-social enablers of the tourism industry have five dimensions as human resources, interaction and participation of local communities, competitiveness, social improvement and cultural values, and 27 elements. Findings in quantitative section show that “human resource” dimension with a final weight of 0.316 has the first priority and the "competitiveness" dimension with a final weight of 0.066 has the lowest priority.