Local people's economic, socio-cultural and environmental perception on ecotourism: The case of Rize

Ecotourism is great importance for both countries and regions in terms of the negativities caused by mass tourism and the changing demands of tourists. Especially in countries where tourism spreads to a certain for local people in regions with natural beauty, but relatively less popularity. The positive perception from indigenous people towards ecotourism will allow improvement of using ecotourism as a one of the alternative type. In the research, it is aimed to measure the ecotourism perception of the local people living in Rize, which has a high ecotourism potential in the Black Sea Region. For this reason, in the first part of the research, information about the concepts of tourism, sustainable tourism and ecotourism is given. In the second part of the research, the information about the province of Rize was mentioned. In the last of part, the aim of the resarch, its importance, findings, the conclusion and suggestion part of the findings are included. For the purpose of the scope of the research, 755 people were reached through online questionnaires, 717 questionnaires were found suitable for analysis after missing and incorrect questionnaires were removed. The obtained data were analyzed using the SPSS 23.0 program. Frequencies, reliability analysis, normality test, T-Test for independent samples, One-Way Anova and correlation analysis were applied, which were thought to be suitable for the data obtained. As a result of the analysis, it was concluded that the perceptions of the local people living in Rize and participating in the survey about the subdimensions of ecotourism were positive and they supported the development of this species in the region.