Designing a model of sustainable development of sports tourism, with an emphasis on the capacities of the desert

In areas with special characteristics such as desert areas, the development of sports is one of the most important options for the development of infrastructure as well as the expansion of the economic origins of these areas. These areas can develop and improve the proposed options for regional tourism. For the development of sports in specific areas such as the desert, it is necessary to provide specific cultural and economic plans that will ultimately lead to the regional development of sports as well as the economic development of the region and the satisfaction of tourists. Desert climate regions in Iran are located among one of the largest desertification belts in the world. Iran is one of the most important countries with significant deserts, whose deserts have high tourism and ecotourism potentials. Tourism in the desert is not only one of the main options for the development of desert and desert sports, but it can contribute to the prosperity of that region based on economic factors that include the costs of desert tourism, the amount of investment in this part of tourism, the rate of return on investment and other issues. also help a lot.

2. Research Methodology

The current research was qualitative and applied in terms of purpose. Since in this research, in terms of the lack of theoretical foundations, it was not possible to gain sufficient knowledge about the important indicators related to the problem and their relationship with each other, the qualitative approach and the foundational grounded-theory method became the basis of the work; Because it is believed that the grounded-theory of the foundation is beyond all descriptive methods due to its conceptualizations of social phenomena. The foundational grounded-theory method is inductive in terms of approach and based on it, the theory is formed from the concepts obtained from the data. In this research, the approach of Strauss and Corbin (1998) was used, because it has a systematic method for data analysis. The statistical population included all experts and specialists related to sports tourism, desert tourism, sustainable development of tourism and topics related to them. Based on this, academic staff members and researchers in the field of sports tourism, senior managers and experts of sports and youth departments and tourism organization of Yazd province were selected as the statistical population. In the current research, the theoretical sampling method was used, which is one of the main features of the foundational groded-theory. This method is a combination of purposeful and snowball sampling methods, which is done by considering the theoretical saturation index compared to sampling from the research population, thus, finally, 22 people from the statistical population were interviewed. The analysis of the collected data was done through three stages of open coding, central coding and selective coding.

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3. Results and discussion

The open coding stage started at the same time as the end of the first interview. In this way, all the interview transcripts were prepared and examined word by word and this work was done for all the interviews. Then, in the axial coding stage, the data that were broken down in the open coding stage, are classified based on thematic and conceptual similarity, and this work continues until the concepts assigned to each category, a comprehensive concept and be abstract in this stage, one of the categories obtained in the open coding stage is selected as the main category or phenomenon and placed in the center of the process, and then other categories are related to it. In the current research, the central category, sustainable development of sports tourism, was determined with an emphasis on the capacities of the desert. After performing all the steps related to open and axial coding, a total of 396 primary codes were extracted from the transcripts of 22 interviews and their analysis, which by examining their similarities and classification, 127 more abstract concepts and finally through Classification of similar concepts, 29 main categories were identified; All these categories and concepts were divided under 5 general categories of causal conditions, contextual conditions, intervening conditions, strategies and consequences. The causal conditions included employment based on entrepreneurship, socio-cultural factors, emotion management, a global position of sports and global tourism, and economic growth. Concepts and categories related to background conditions included geographical and security conditions, socio-cultural conditions, political conditions, existence of fans and volunteer forces, natural and artificial roads, laws and regulations, and economic and budget problems. Concepts and categories related to intervening conditions included managerial and structural factors, service-facility conditions, human resources, political conditions, media and information systems, and financial and economic conditions.









4. Conclusion

Today, tourism has found a global scope and is considered one of the phenomena arising from the all-round development of technological innovations in the modern era. What has turned tourism into a factor in the development process is the flow of capital, culture and information in an overlap with factors such as increased income, level of well-being, more leisure time and improved communication. One of the determining factors in the tourism industry is to pay attention to sports and its development and strengthening, as well as organizing competitions and events at various domestic and international levels. The role of sports in many economic, social and cultural fields is the necessity of investing in this category, and an economic look at sports seems necessary today. Sports tourism takes place in different regions and includes various propositions according to the type of region and the type of regional options; One of the most important and most powerful of these areas are the deserts, which also form an important part of the nature of this country in Iran, and the present research has investigated the issue of sustainable development of sports tourism with emphasis on their capacities.