The Approach of the Host Community to the Expansion of Tourism in the Rural Areas

The planning and the expansion of tourism as an important factor in the process of economization of social and cultural matters and an instrumental, functional, productive, natural and cultural approach will make different visions towards tourism necessary. Usually tourism is used as a tool to stimulate the critical economies and reinforce the developmental activities through the creation of jobs and income. The approach and the support of the residents is one of the key ingredients in the approach of the permanent expansion of tourism. If rural tourism is managed and focused on well, there is this possibility that it will become a new source of income and employment and at the meantime it will play a wide-open role in breaking the social isolation and encourage the rural communities to become populated. The goal of this research is to analyze the effective factors on the amount of support of tourism expansion by the residents in the historical village of Kandevan among the villages in the city of Oskoo. This research is done by a walking method based on using questionnaires. The statistical pool has been divided in 3 groups of ordinary residents, actives in the service division and the authority in the public division and the relative class sampling with the sample volume of 100 people. In order to analyze the variables in this study, SPSS software and statistical correlation methods, Regression and non-parametric statistical tests were utilized. Also, by using SWOT model, we attained the situation of this village in the social, economic, service and cultural fields as such that in this research, the expansion of tourism as an independent variable and its positive and negative effects in economic, social and environmental dimensions and the amount of support by the community as a dependent variable of the research was explained. The findings of the research show that, in general, the rural residents of the village of Kandovan with an agreement rate of 82.7% have a positive attitude toward the expansion of tourism in the mentioned area. Also, based on the results of the research the nature of the residents’ attitude in the area under study compared to tourism has a significant difference and the amount of the support by the residents is effected by the level of the expansion in tourism as such that as the amount of negative effects are increased compared to the profits or advantages, gradually, the amount of support by the host diminishes.