نشریه مطالعات اجتماعی گردشگری
سال نهم شماره 2 (پاییز و زمستان 1400)

As a service industry that has significantly expanded in recent years, tourism plays an important role in developing many countries, including Iran, which enjoys various unique historical, religious, cultural, and natural sites and a four-season climate. Therefore, this study set out to examine the efficiency of Iran's tourism industry using tourism data regarding its 31 provinces during the years 2011 to 2017, including the information concerning the budget allocated to the tourism sector, the number of accommodation places, the number of tourist attraction sites in each province, and the number of domestic and foreign tourists. To this end, Fuzzy Data Envelopment Analysis was used to analyze the collected data. The study's results showed that Ardabil, Tehran, Kohkiluyeh Boyer-Ahmad, and Gilan had had the efficiency in terms of tourism throughout the study period, with their average efficiency as a primary criterion for assessing the efficiency of the country's tourism industry reported as average. Moreover, the analysis of the tourism industry's efficiency in different climates suggested that the highest efficiency belonged to the temperate and humid climate, and the lowest one was related to the hot and dry climate. Therefore, it seems that facilitating transportation infrastructure and providing welfare facilities, especially in provinces with low efficiency, could help use the potentials of different provinces to develop the country's tourism industry.

This study sought to analyze the content of tourism education in elementary school textbooks. To this end, some 3776 pages of the textbooks' full content were analyzed using the Shannon entropy method. The study's corpus consisted of 41 elementary school textbooks, including Persian Reading, Persian Writing, Experimental Sciences, Social Studies, Heavenly Gifts, Quran, Work and Technology, and Thinking and research. To obtain the validity of the content analysis, four main components of tourism education were derived from the available literature of the field, using the CVR method. Moreover, after reviewing the textbooks' content twice, the results were presented to three different raters to confirm the reliability of the identified components. Accordingly, the data's content validity was found to be 0.09, and its reliability was reported as 0.70. The study's results indicated that the most and least significant components were "The Whatness of tourism" and "The whoness of the tourists" (Tourist identity), respectively." In addition, the highest frequency of the data was found in the social studies book.

In the new world of tourism, information technology is used to manage tourism destinations, develop business models, and interact with tourists. Thus, in a tourism destination, the alignment of IT-based practical actions needs to be taken into account. This study set out to analyze the influential factors involved in implementing e-tourism and develop a useful model in this regard, trying to propose operational actions based on the evaluation scores of the factors in the area under study. These factors were obtained from the related literature using thematic analysis. Moreover, interpretive structural modeling was used to determine the relationships between the factors and complexity reduction. The study’s statistical population comprised Hamadan’s tourism experts who were selected via purposive sampling. The study’s findings showed that out of the eleven factors involved in implementing e-tourism, social factors (governmental laws and policies, public awareness and culture, and sense of trust and justice) were the main driving forces. The dependence of technical factors (IT infrastructures in tourist attractions and destination management organizations) on other factors was found to be greater than the other ones. Moreover, based on the study’s results, specific measures were proposed for implementing information technology in Hamadan’s tourism industry through capital asset acquisition projects, private investment projects, and executive activities.

"Due to its very nature, tourism enjoys proper grounds for entrepreneurship development. There are limited studies on the development of entrepreneurship in tourism. Among the growing areas of tourism, ‘Cultural Tourism’ could be referred to as a demanding preference for development in areas with the potentials for growth. This study sought to provide a model for entrepreneurship development in cultural tourism using Grounded theory. To this end, some eleven semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect the required data, out of which and 367 primary codes, 97 secondary codes, 44 concept codes were extracted and classified into ten distinct categories. The study’s population consisted of university instructors and lecturers, experts working in state-owned tourism institutions, the owners of active businesses in Yazd cultural tourism, and the professionals within the field who were selected through ‘theoretical sampling.’ Moreover, the sample size was determined based on theoretical saturation. The study’s results found via the application of the ‘three-pronged model’ indicated that factors involved in the development of cultural tourism entrepreneurship could be categorized in three general categories of ‘structural factors,’ grounds and ‘environmental conditions, and ‘behavioral factors,’ each including their own relevant components and indices.

The UNESCO registry of communities' cultural heritage as the World Heritage Sites prepares the ground for further development of tourism industry, requiring local communities' contribution to the success of preservation programs. Given that Yazd province includes a historic city with several gardens and aqueducts that have been registered in the UNESCO World Heritage list, it demands the identification of influential factors involved in achieving maximum social contribution and improving the process of destination's strategic management. Therefore, this study sought to investigate the influential factors involved in enhancing the social contribution of the local community in preserving the world heritage sites existing in Yazd province. The study is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-correlational in terms of data collection. The study's statistical population comprised all tourism professionals and staff who were active in Yazd during winter 2019, out of which 155 individuals were selected as the sample size via stratified random sampling. After measuring the validity and reliability of the instruments, the collected data were analyzed via LISREL software and structural equation modeling. The results suggested that perception, interest, the locals' knowledge and their awareness of the contribution process, and the opportunities and awards offered by managers for contributing to preserving the world heritage sites had significant direct effects on all levels of contribution (forced, induced, & voluntary), with voluntary contribution affected the most in comparison with other levels.

Apart from its positive effects, rural areas’ tourism development would exert some tangible and intangible negative influences on the host community. For instance, some tourists destroy and damage the rural areas’ infrastructure and tourist attractions in different ways such as engraving remembrance words, breaking down trees, etc., which, in the long term, may negatively affect the relationship between the host community and the visitors of the tourism destination villages, leading to a decrease in community’s tourism reception and social tolerance. Therefore, this study sought to analyze the relationship between tourists’ vandalistic activities in rural areas and the local community’s tourism reception and tolerance in the five tourism villages of Neyshabour. To this end, a descriptive-analytical methodology was applied, using library resources and surveys to collect the required data. The study’s population comprised 92 heads of families living in the studied villages. The results suggested that the most frequent vandalized activity conducted by tourists was polluting the village and its surroundings with wastes and the use of alcoholic drinks and drugs. Scores of the locals’ tourism reception and tolerance were, except one case (tolerance of social anomalies induced by tourist visits), reported above average. Moreover, the results of correlation analysis indicated a significant reverse correlation between tourism reception and the locals’ conflict with tourists. Also, the analysis of the effect of tourists’ vandalistic activities on the local community’s tourism reception and social tolerance showed that the significance level was less than 0.05, indicating that the regression model used for the analysis was significant for both dependent variables.

"Contrary to automotive, commodity-based, and money-oriented cities, a people-oriented city is an organic and systematic city based on human virtues and commune where people are concerned about each others’ rights. In such a city, humans are the main focus of urban planners, urban developers, and, most importantly, municipal decision-makers and executives. Therefore, here the biological, spiritual, and psychological needs of humans are the fundamental elements taken into account by urban management. This city, then, could unite urban spaces and tourists. Considering its great potentials, Yazd could be a good case for tourism development, building people-oriented cities, and improving the desirability of urban life. This qualitative-quantitative study sought to explore the feasibility of building a people-oriented city in Yazd province based on urban planning and the causal factors involved in this regard, intending to attract more tourists to this region. To this end, 14 interviews were conducted with tourism and urban planning experts, out of which 19 factors involved in building such a city were identified. The causal relationship between the identified factors was examined through a mixed-method approach, using the fuzzy cognitive mapping technique. The study’s findings indicated that educating the citizens, developing a sense of familiarity with the environment, and reducing environmental pollutions (soil, water, air) were the three most important factors for developing people oriented-cities in Yazd province, Iran. "

Community-oriented tourism seeks to create economic benefits, preserve natural resources, protect the local culture, and improve the local community's quality of life, so that needs of the present and future generations are met. This type of tourism development would bear maximum benefits if the local communities' infrastructural potentials are strengthened, and the rural community's ability to use them is improved. Therefore, this descriptive-analytical study set out to examine the impact of community-oriented tourism on the development of rural communities from the perspective of the local community. To this end, 365 questionnaires were administered to the target tourism villages (namely Hajij, Shamshir, Nasmeh, and Khaneghah) located in Paveh city, using the SPSS software to analyze the collected data. The results showed that community-based tourism promoted economic, social, cultural, and environmental indicators, leading to rural development. Moreover, the regression analysis on the intended variables suggested economic indicators played the highest role in local community development, followed by social, cultural, and environmental indicators, respectively. Kendall's tau-b test results also proved a significant correlation between local community development and community-based tourism.

Today's business environment requires organizations to find new strategies to compete with their rivals. Therefore, maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty is an important goal to achieve by organizations. In a world where competition among companies is constantly increasing, the immediate solution to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage is to improve the quality of services, which in turn leads to customer satisfaction. Many organizations have recognized that customer satisfaction can bring about their long-term success, and the entities involved in the tourism industry, especially the hotels, are no exception. Furthermore, many studies conducted in various industries have shown that providing quality services is a key factor in building customer loyalty. In other words, offering superior services to customers leads to customer satisfaction, which is necessary to establish customer loyalty. This functional survey study set out to investigate the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction, loyalty, and trust in the Enghelab and Laleh hotels in Tehran city. To collect the required data, some questionnaires were administered to the hotels' guests who were selected via the available non-random sampling method. The data were then analyzed via structural equation modeling using SMART PLS software. The results showed that service quality had a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction, trust, and loyalty. It was also found that customer satisfaction had a significant positive effect on customer's trust and loyalty. The impact of customer's trust on customer's loyalty was also proved to be positive and significant.

This study sought to identify and prioritize the development steps of cultural tourism in rural areas of Lorestan province using the qualitative-quantitative method and exploratory approach. To this end, at the first stage, 19 semi-structured interviews were conducted with cultural tourism experts to identify the steps involved in cultural tourism development, out of which thirty-three solutions were identified in four main steps via open, axial, and selective coding. At the second stage, the Delphi-Fuzzy technique was applied in two stages to reach a consensus among the experts and prioritize cultural tourism development steps through the defuzzification process. The results showed that the identified strategies for cultural tourism development in Lorestan province could be categorized into four main steps: "Education and Innovation," "Physical Infrastructure," "Supportive-Institutional," and "Cultural-Advertising." Moreover, since the defuzzificated mean difference of the experts' opinion was less than 0.25 in two steps, all the identified solutions were proved to be valid. The results also indicated that the first and foremost step in tourism development was "education and innovation," followed by physical infrastructure, supportive-institutional, and cultural-promotional steps, respectively. Furthermore, at each step, the most important solutions were found to be advertising for tourism villages, identifying villages with tourism potentials, providing banking facilities for villagers to help them develop tourism, and building cultural elements and particular architectures in rural areas, respectively.