Understanding the network dynamics of sustainable community-based ecotourism in Lorestan, Iran

Since many key actors intervene in providing services and meeting the needs of ecotourism and local communities, it is necessary to identify their position, cooperation and communication in order to strengthen interests, plan and empower organizational interactions and provide the needs and services of ecotourists and local people. Based on this, the purpose of this research was to analyze the network of sustainable community-based ecotourism (SCBET) actors. In this regard, from key informants in 20 responsible organizations in SCBET in Lorestan province, Iran, through purposeful snowball sampling, the necessary information was collected through a network analysis questionnaire and through social network analysis (SNA), UCINET and NetDraw software were analyzed. The results were extracted six dimensions of sustainability (management, environmental, economic, social, political and cultural) based on micro-level indicators (in-degree centrality, out-degree centrality, eigenvec centrality, closeness centrality (proximity) and betweenness centrality) and the diagrams of the networks of the mentioned dimensions of 20 key actors were drawn. The results obtained in the form of SNA can help tourism policy makers and decision makers to identify the challenges facing ecotourism and to analyze the various relationships between actors and stakeholders (private sectors, government and local communities).