Özet:

Tourism development if accompanied with proper planning and principles plays a major role in empowering local areas particularly in coastal villages by creating new job opportunities, reducing unemployment and bringing economic growth. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the strengths and opportunities and also the weaknesses and threats for the development of tourism and to provide guidelines on the development of coastal villages in the north of Iran. This study is an applied type with a descriptive-analytical method. The sample of the present research consists of coastal villages. After identifying the parameters, a questionnaire was designed in which 200 villagers, experts and officials of the tourism sector in the population were selected using Cochran formula. Finally, using descriptive analysis and factor analysis in SPSS, data were analyzed. The results of the factor analysis suggests that various investigated factors as weaknesses or threats were classified into four categories. 72.41 percent of total variance and the rest of 27.59 % were related to factors beyond the scope of this study. It is worth noting that the main challenges facing the development of coastal villages were infrastructure, environmental, health, socio-cultural and economical challenges. Also, different investigated factors as strengths were grouped into four categories which explain 70.36 percent of total variance and the rest of 29.64 percent are related to the factors beyond the scope of this study. Moreover, opportunities were environmental, economical, socio-cultural and infrastructure ones.

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