Community-Based Management of the Bisetoun Site: a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Iran

The purpose of this study is to investigate the indicators of Support for Sustainable Tourism Development (SSTD) by communities in the case of Bisetoun site in Iran, which is listed in UNESCO world heritage site in 2006. A survey research(with 489 questionnaires) was administered to obtain perception of four communities regarding impact of perceived benefit, perceived costs, community attachment, community involvement in the process of tourism development in Bisetoun heritage site. Means, standard deviations, correlations, reliability test, structural equation modeling (SEM), and invariance metric tests were performed to test measurement and research model. The results revealed that community attachment, community involvement, and perceived benefits significantly and positively related to SSTD, while perceived costs do not significantly related to SSTD. The results also show that the effect of community attachment and community involvement on SSTD is statistically and partially varied among communities which contribute to tourism development in Bisetoun site. Keywords: Heritage Tourism, Community-Based Tourism, Iran-Bisetoun, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), Invariance Metric Tests, Correlation Matrix.