Tourism economic advantages in the physical and functional transformations of rural settlements in the Central District of Lahijan, Iran

摘要

Nowadays, tourism is considered as a tool of rural areas development in many countries of the world. In recent years, tourism development has created a new system on landscape and the spatial structure of the rural areas and it has affected the role and function of villages as well as the structure of settlements. The study area is a number of villages in the central part of Lahijan that has diverse tourist attractions. In recent years, attraction of tourist in this area has been provided more and more and it has several consequences, the most important of which are changes in the structure and function of villages. The most important of these changes include land use change (from agriculture to residential and commercial), creation of new economicactivities in the service sector, construction of tourism-related structures and prosperity of service activities. This research has practical objectives and its results could be used in other areas. Research method is descriptive-analytical. According to experts' survey, 8 touristy villages were selected and they were studied in terms of economic benefits. Items related to this indicator were scored based on Likert's 5-point scale and related questions were arranged. In this research, SPSS software wasused to extract the data from the questionnaires, and one group T method was used to test the hypotheses. The results indicate that economic advantages are the main influencing factor in physical and functional changes of the study area.