Boyer-Ahmad County

Purpose- Over the past few decades, tourism has played an important role in revitalizing the nature, creating employment and income, preserving natural, historical and cultural heritage, and ultimately sustainable development by utilizing the natural and cultural capacities of the region. Since tourism has different economic, social, cultural, and environmental impacts on host communities, awareness of the attitude of the host community as a tourism product provider is of great importance. The main objective of the study is to investigate the local residents' attitude toward mass tourism effects in Boyer-Ahmad County. Design/methodology/approach- The present study is descriptive-analytical in nature. It takes an empirical approach. The research instrument was a questionnaire with 82 items that gathered the information needed for the research. The sample size was calculated to be 195 individuals using PASS software at 95% of confidence level. One-sample t-test, ANOVA, Friedman, and Scheffe post-hoc tests were used to analyze and respond to research hypotheses in SPSS software. Finding- The results of t-test considering the significance level of the test and the high and low levels of confidence indicated the impact of tourism in the environmental, economic, social, and fundamental dimensions, while the results of ANOVA test showed that the average of each dimension was different. The results of Friedman test with a significant level of 0.00 have assigned the highest rank to the fundamental dimension.

Purpose- The main objective of present study is analysis of viewpoints of Boyer-Ahmad local communities about rural development. The criteria of rural development are identified by a systematic approach from the standpoints of people who are aware of current rural issues in the investigated villages. In the next stage, the level of development of settlements was determined according to the identified criteria. Design/methodology/approach- The current study is based on qualitative methods (grounded theory) and quantitative (descriptive-analytical and survey). The required data was collected through the field methods (questionnaire and interview). The sample population of the study was determined to extract the indicators purposefully and based on the snowball method until the theoretical saturation of the interview with 18 people was reached. The statistical population of the study is the people living in the villages of Boyer-Ahmad County. 380 people in 10 rural settlements are assessed by employing Cochran's formula. The validity of the research questionnaire was confirmed by content validity and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha. SPSS22 and ArcGis software were used for analyzing the data. Finding- In the index extraction stage, 51 concepts were identified in the form of 6 major categories. In the second stage, the results of one-sample t-test showed that rural settlements have a development coefficient of 0.35 in terms of the studied categories with an average of 2.46, which are at an undeveloped level. The status of development categories also shows that the category of environmental resources with an average of 3.31 has the best level and the category of quality of life with an average of 1.96 have the worst situation in the studied villages. The results also show that the Ganjeh Kohneh village with a coefficient of 0.43 and Mazdak village with a coefficient of 0.40 are in the middle development level and other settlements are in the undeveloped level. Practical implications- According to the results, solutions such as equitable distribution of services, development of a vision document for integrated development, diversification of economic activities and the use of social capital of villagers in the planning process have been proposed. Originality/value- Before planning at the local level, it is necessary to examine the views of the local community regarding rural development. There are differences between rural areas in terms of capabilities, talents, facilities and priorities, and local planning can take these differences into account.