A comparison of the viewpoints of tourists, interested managers and cultural heritage organization managers regarding sport tourism-driven job and income creation in Mazandaran- Iran

Abstract

Sport tourism is an ever increasing industry recognized as a factor influencing the economic and social restructuring of urban and rural areas in the developing countries .It is considered as a main component of sport –dependent tourism in many countries and recently has attracted much attention as a “domestic market” Hence, the purpose of the present research is to investigate and compare the viewpoints of tourists,interested managers and tourism-cultural heritage organization managers with regard to sport tourism –driven job and income creation in Mazandaran province-Iran.Here,our measure is Likert's 5-item questionnaire whose validity and reliability confirmed by the experienced university faculty members and Cronbach alpha coefficient (82%), respectively .The collected data was analyzed using SPSS software .Also descriptive frequency tests and chi- square inferential statistics were taken into account.The results show that job creation (χ _ 4.360, p_ 0.35) and income production (χ2 _1.633, p_ 0.80) were previously at a minimum However, the role of tourism industry development is believed to create jobs (χ2 _ 9.740, p_ 0.04)and income(χ2 _ 5.224,0.51). Compared with other studies,the present research indicates that future sport tourism industry influences job and income production in the regions hosting the sport events provided that the sport tourism industry and its respective infrastructures are well-developed.