Stimuli and Inhibitors of Rural Tourism Development: A Case Study of Kolm Village in Badreh County of Iran

This study aimed at investigating the stimuli and inhibitors of tourism development in Kolm village in Badreh County of Iran. The statistical population included all the experts and authorities of tourism institutions and the present tourists in the county as well as the residents of Kolm village (N=1004). For the experts and authorities group, the census method was used to select the sample (n=31); for the group of present tourists, 35 people were selected in a convenience sampling method; and to select the sample of rural residents group, the random sampling method was used through Cochran formula (n=240). Both the face and content validities of the questionnaire were approved by the experts and its reliability was determined using Cronbach's alpha coefficient (α=0.271). The collected data were analyzed in two methods of descriptive statistics and factor analysis. As shown by the factor analysis results, in terms of importance, there were identified four factors as stimuli (drivers) of the rural tourism development (including environmental, socio-cultural, economic-promotional, and welfare-infrastructural stimuli, respectively) and the same four factors as inhibitors of the rural tourism development (including welfare-infrastructural, environmental, socio-cultural, and economic-promotional inhibitors, respectively). The mentioned factors explained 62.445 and 54.219 percent of the total variance of the rural tourism development, respectively.