Explaining Factors Influencing Sport Tourism Development Case Study: Minudasht County, Iran Mansour

Abstract

Sports tourism is one of the growing types of tourism in which competitions and sporting events attract large numbers of tourists. In this regard, the present study has explored the factors affecting the development of sport tourism in Minudasht County through a descriptive-analytical method based on library and field studies. The groups involved in this study are: local community, local managers, and tourists. The first group size was estimated 380 using Cochran formula and its correction. 20 managers were used as the sample for the second group and 100 tourists were selected as the sample for the third group. Research findings suggest that among the potential of sports tourism, aerial sports such as paragliding are ranked first. The research findings also show that various factors affect tourism development process that in current study, 40 components and 9 main factors including geographical factors, risk level factors, quality of service factors, factors related to planning sport event, economic factors, capacounty factors, competition factors, host community participation factors, and macro-policy of government factors that influence of all of these statistical factors on the development of sport tourism in Minudasht county was approved using multivariate regression test.