Assistant professor of Geography department, Faculty of Literature and human sciences , University of Guilan, Iran
Abstract
Tourism development is one of the strategies that can be considered for rural development. One of the characteristics of tourism is its scattered nature. Based on that much attention is brought to the network cooperation in tourism during recent years. In many countries’ economy, networks are more important than other areas in tourism. Accordingly considering the approach of analyzing the social networks and their applications are quiet important in tourism development. Analyzing the social networks, scientific methodology and statistical techniques are to describe, analyze and evaluate the empirical relationship between subjects and structure of the study. These subjects can be different people, objects, groups, ideas, carriers, questions, agents, domains, clusters and classes. This analysis has the capability of displaying the outer reality (which is a network) in a regular and intensive review descriptions and provides storage, replication, composition and integration, retrieval and display of information. In this study, by reviewing the existing literature, theoretical and methodological dimensions of the network, the background of social network analysis on a variety of topics, their rise, application and benefits in rural tourism are brought and discussed. The results proved that due to the scattered nature of destinations in rural tourism and their related businesses, a network approach can be considered as a method to develop these types of tourism activities