Assessing Social Entrepreneurship Criteria in Rural Tourism Development: A Case Study of Gilan Province, Iran

In today’s world, finding practical solutions to deal with rural developments is required for the survival of the villages. On the other hand, many countries consider tourism as the economic driving force, setting as the main strategy in developing appropriate plans for rural development. To this end, social entrepreneurship and tourism are given specific priority, the promotion of which could prepare the grounds for the development and progress of rural areas. Therefore, considering the fact that social entrepreneurship criteria are of great importance in rural tourism development and that few studies have so far been conducted on the assessment of the effectiveness of such criteria in fulfilling the development goals, this study sought to investigate social entrepreneurship criteria in rural tourism development in Gilan province, Iran. To this end, first, the criteria for social entrepreneurship in tourism were identified by reviewing the related literature. Then, a researcher-developed questionnaire was administered to thirty-five entrepreneurs, experts, and professionals in the field of tourism with at least five years of working experience who were selected via snowball sampling to identify the significance of each criterion with regard to the other ones. Finally, the investigated criteria were ranked using Interpretive structural modeling (ISM). According to the findings of the study, nine levels were identified for the ranking of the investigated criteria, with the ninth level, that is belief in entrepreneurship and the creative use of resources, being the most influential social entrepreneurship criteria involved in rural tourism development in Gilan province.