Importance and effectiveness of influential institutions on rural tourism development (application of network analysis method)

The importance and effectiveness of institutions is such that in the new approaches of sustainable development. Institutional dimension is considered as one of the four basic dimensions of sustainable development: socio-economic and environmental dimensions. In the sustainable tourism development approaches, the effectiveness of institutions, especially local or specialized institutions, in this regard can be very important and vital. The present study examines the importance and effectiveness of institutions affecting the development of rural tourism using the application of network analysis. The present research method is descriptive-analytical. The main research tool is the questionnaire. The statistical population of this study is the households of the villages in four tourist target villages in Torqabeh village, Binalood city in Khorasan Razavi province. Necessary data were collected from 200 rural households in Torqabeh district. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to measure the reliability of the research instrument (questionnaire) and KMO coefficient was used to validate the questionnaire. Data were analyzed by SPSS, UCINET, NETDRAW soft wares. The results of the network analysis showed that six effective institutions in the development of rural tourism, including the council, Dehyar, private sector, heritage organization, district and non-governmental sector in terms of its importance and effectiveness on the development of rural tourism from the perspective of villagers were examined. Villagers belived the local institutions such as: Shura and specialized institutions such as: the private sector and the Heritage Organization  have been more important and effective than other institutions involved in the process of rural tourism development.