Identifying and Ranking the Interaction of Structural barriers of Community-Based Tourism in Iran

Recently, the tourism literature has paid much attention to the role of society in all aspects of sustainable development and has considered the participation of society in tourism as an important challenge in the development of sustainable tourism. Local stakeholders often face numerous structural, cultural and operational barriers to active participation in community-based tourism. The present research has been done in terms of applied purpose and content analysis method. Data collection was done through library studies and was completed by a questionnaire using experts. Initially, 13 community-based tourism challenges were identified, endorsed and localized by experts; Then, the challenges identified by seven urban managements, tourism and university management experts were weighed using the SWARA method. Then, a model of barrier internal relationships was presented using an interpretive structural modeling approach. MICMAC software was applied to confirm the findings. According to the findings of interpretive structural modeling, the barriers were balanced at six levels and the barriers to the political attitude of the experts, the centralized government structure, and the distinct missions and goals; have had the most impact. Also, according to MICMAC, the six challenges include the political attitudes of experts, the centralized structure, the distinct mission and goals, the resistance to reform, the domination of the elite, and the high costs of participation; were identified as influential study variables. According to the results, the main factors that hinder the sustainable development of tourism are beyond the control of the people and local authorities. Therefore, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts at the national level should distribute power among city councils and establish a balance of power, so that local authorities can feel their impact on the development of community-based tourism.
 
Extended Abstract
1-Introduction
Community-based tourism has emerged as one of the most promising ways to integrate natural resource conservation, local income generation, poverty reduction and cultural protection, especially in developing countries. It is often used to describe various activities that encourage and support a wide range of goals in socio-economic development and protection. It is also often used as an alternative to mass tourism and as a way to make tourism more sustainable. Community-based discusses social justice, empowerment, equity, redistribution measures, tourism ownership, and the overall development of the country and the community. In order to identify barriers to create a capable community for cooperation in tourism development in developing countries, researchers have identified barriers that are found at the organizational and community levels, which are mainly structural in origin and their emergence has been due to the lack of community member role in decision-making because of no resources, knowledge, skills and education, which has led to people lacking ownership and motivation in terms of tourism ownership. Lack of access to decision-making, lack of resources, knowledge, skills and education, lack of ownership in relation to tourism and government focus are some of the barriers to empower citizens to participate in tourism in Iran. The development of tourism in a destination usually goes through stages in which the interests of the community are gradually being jeopardized and marginalized by outsiders and local elites. According to studies, the level of citizen participation under the influence of factors such as citizen satisfaction with the performance of urban management, the sense of ownership in citizens, public awareness of their responsibilities towards the urban management system, the sense of social belonging, citizens' awareness of participation, transparency of executive management, equality and non-discrimination among different regions, creating mutual trust by the city administration in order to attract citizens' participation and eliminating pessimism towards urban management among the people in relation to attracting participation, legalization of urban management, transparency of communication channels, observance citizenship rights and citizenship of the urban management system, create a safe environment for participation and institutionalize a culture of civic participation.
 
2-Materials and Methods
The present research has been done in terms of applied purpose and content analysis method and data collection has been done through library studies and has been completed by a questionnaire by experts. First, 13 community-based tourism challenges were identified and localized; The challenges identified by the seven urban management, tourism and academia experts were then weighed using the SWARA method. The challenges identified by the seven urban management, tourism and academia experts were then weighed using the SWARA method. Experts were selected by purposive judgment and the feature of the researchers in the present study was to use the information of experts based on their deep knowledge of the relevant field and their relative knowledge of the sub-dimensions of the subject as well as their practical experience in tourism and urban affairs. After prioritizing the challenges, in the next step, the challenges were graded using an interpretive structural approach, and finally the results were tested and validated by MICMAC software.
 
3- Results and Discussion
The present study identifies and ranks the structural barriers of community-based tourism through the ISM-MICMAC approach. ISM is a method used to identify contextual relationships between specific elements, while MICMAC facilitates the classification of challenges based on their influence and dependence. Another contribution stems from the emergence of an overview of the challenges and theorizing of interrelationships and interdependencies among the structural challenges of community-based tourism. Also, due to the limited literature in this field, it has covered the theoretical gaps in this field. According to the findings, the challenges were balanced at six levels, with the challenge of the political attitude of experts having the most influence and the least dependence on other variables. Besides, the challenge of changing the structure of the stakeholder network and the isolation of society have had the least influence and the most dependence. Mick Mack's findings indicated that the political attitudes of the experts, the centralized structure, the distinct mission and goals, the resistance to reform, the domination of the elite, and the high costs of participation were the most influential and the least influential, respectively; In other words, the most important characteristics of these variables are low impact and high effectiveness.
 
4- Conclusion
In general, it was concluded that the existence of political attitudes in Iranian organizations is a major challenge in the path of effective stakeholder participation in community-based sustainable tourism. This shows that most of the factors that hinder the sustainable development of tourism are beyond the control of the people and local authorities. Given the high impact of this case, it is necessary that the political causes of work and political attitude be fundamentally rooted in higher institutions and that continuous measures be taken to eliminate them with a national will. The Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts at the national level should distribute power among city councils and strike a balance of power so that local authorities can influence the development of community-based tourism. One of these important measures in this regard is to create a sustainable revenue plan for municipalities because it directly affects the ability of municipalities and citizens. If communities are not truly empowered in tourism destinations, participation may be limited to the elites of the community, which often leads to the interests of the community rather than the interests of the community as a whole. Interactions should be goal-oriented so that the goals of communication are clear to the parties and overlap of tasks, so it is necessary for organizations to have a clear organizational mission statement regarding community participation and to adopt strong regulatory and legal measures in this regard.