Implementation, Development and Improvement of Rural Ecotourism through Cooperative Entities in Markazi Province: A Feasibility Study

The current research is a feasibility study on implementation, development and improvement of rural ecotourism through cooperative entities in Markazi Province in 1388 (2009). Being applied in kind, it assumes a correlational analysis through a combination of documentary and field study methods. Questionnaire has been used as the data collection tool whose validity and reliability were tested by a panel of experts and a chronbach Alpha of (0.8) respectively. The results suggest relatively poor grounds existing for feasibility, implementation, development and improvement of rural ecotourism along economic, socio-cultural, management and ecological dimensions. Thereof, the socio-cultural variables however, seem to enjoy better status than the other ones. On the other hand, the measures relating to capital (economic), public participation (management) and member awareness of socioeconomic nature of cooperatives hold the highest weight from rural ecotourism point of view. The results also indicate that there is a significant relation between the quadruple dimensions. Moreover, the cooperative improvement solutions to rural ecotourism could be categorized into three groups i.e. supportive-training; communicational-welfare; and information-planning which explain about %88 of the variance.