Rural Community Capital Framework and Its Role in Tourism Development (Case Study: Target Villages of Abhar Township)

Authors

1 Associate Professor of Geography and Rural Planning, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran

2 PhD Student of Geography and Rural Planning, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran

3 Assistant Professor of Socio-Economic Research, Agricultural and Natural Resources Researches and Education Center of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran

Abstract

Rural settlements as an open system have various forms of natural, economic, social, human, cultural and symbolic capital that play an important role in the development of tourism. As such, these funds are mainly classified into two groups of tangible and intangible resources. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of local community capital in tourism development in target villages of Abhar township (Zanjan province). The present research is an applied one and its method is descriptive-analytical and library and field methods have been used for data collection. The statistical population of the study consisted of 7 tourism target villages of Abhar township which has 1268 households based on Population and Housing Census data (2016). Of these, 190 were selected using Cochran formula. The face validity of the questionnaire was evaluated by experts and the reliability of the variables was estimated 76% using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Statistical tests such as t-test, regression and Kruskal-Wallis were used for quantitative analysis of data. The results show that community capital has a positive and significant impact on tourism development. So that the natural capital, social capital and cultural capital of tourism target villages with numerical mean values of (4.13), (4.08) and (4.06) respectively have played a decisive role in the development of tourism, respectively. And. Also in the regression fitting model, coefficient of determination is equal to (0.84) and indicates positive impact of local community capital on tourism development and natural (0.379), social (0.242), cultural (0.181) capital had the most impact on development. There is tourism. The results of Kruskal-Wallis test also showed that there is no significant difference at 95% level in local community capital except for cultural capital and constructed between sample villages and in villages of Darsajin and Qorveh due to having local community capital in the first place and Second.

Keywords


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