Assessing the Effects of Rural Tourism Branding on Improving the Quality of Life in Rural Area of Iran (A Case Study of Binalud County)

Abstract

<strong>Purpose:</strong> Nowadays, communities intends to create brands in the field of tourism for various reasons. The most important reasons are to signalize a specific location or tourism destination in order to encourage tourists to spend more, and improve the standards and quality of life of residents. This study seeks to investigate the effects of tourism brands on the quality of rural life in the study area. <br /><strong>Methods:</strong> The research is an applied one conducted in a descriptive-analytical method. A major part of the data was collected using field studies and sampling (Cochran formula) from 167 households of 9263 rural households in the study area. <br /><strong>Results:</strong> Research findings suggest that there is a positive and 99% significant relationship between tourism brands and all components of life quality. Rural tourism development can provide villagers with incentives to stay, social justice, a sense of belonging, more benefits from the investments, services and facilities, satisfaction with living space and environmental facilities in rural areas. <br /><strong>Conclusion:</strong> The path analysis tests in several stages showed that ‘appropriate infrastructure' as one of the indicators in the independent variable (rural tourism brand) with 40.4 percent had the most significant effect on improving the quality of rural life. This paper contributes to the literature by including various variables in the tourism brand. Therefore, this paper has a new subject and, in practical aspects, it tries to take a general assessment to find out the impact of rural brand tourism on the quality of rural life in Iran.