Abstract

Background and purpose
In Iran, the history of foresight goes back to the five-year development plans of the country and the development vision document (the Horizon 1404); one of the essential axes raised in this document is the country's development through sustainable tourism. As a type of sustainable tourism, nature-based tourism has the potential to play a role in regional and national development. Therefore, the current research, as a descriptive-analytical and field study, is to compile the future scenarios of this type of tourism in Yazd province and evaluate its situation based on these scenarios.
 
Materials and Methods
In order to identify the factors affecting the development of nature-based tourism in Yazd Province, the factors affecting this type of tourism have been extracted through library studies (domestic and international ones, available documents, and research projects) and field studies (observation, interview, and questionnaire). Since the identification of factors influencing this type of tourism is different depending on the scale of the research and the place of evaluation, and the priorities of the study area, therefore, all the extracted factors are based on the subjectivity in the study area of Yazd, the degree of similarity or the sameness of the subject and the case study of the research. Based on the present research and combining similar factors, they were selected as a single factor. Finally, 31 influential factors were selected in six economic, social, cultural, managerial, physical, and environmental dimensions. Their validity was confirmed by experts using the method of content validity ratio. Cronbach's alpha test was also used to measure the reliability of the factors. In the next step, in order to identify the key factors, the structural analysis method was applied, and in order to perform its calculations, Micmac software was exerted. In order to determine the effect of factors on each other, a questionnaire including 31 factors and six dimensions was prepared. Their weight was determined by the mentioned experts based on the proposed spectrum of Micmac software, and in this way, key factors were identified. Then, for each key factor, all kinds of possible future situations have been predicted, and based on that matrix of cross effects has been compiled and provided to the experts. The results were used in the scenario wizard software, and the scenarios for developing nature-based tourism in Yazd province were compiled.
 
Findings and discussion
The key factors identified in the development of nature-based tourism in Yazd Province are government investment, non-government investment, laws related to tourism development, education, information technologies, quality of communication routes, protected areas, modes of transportation, tourism development planning, security, advertising, presentation Government facilities to attract private investors, tourism, nature tourism attractions, local participation, creating coordination and integration between related organizations, financial support of international organizations, environmental air quality and safety. Among the five drawn scenarios, the first and second are favorable, the third is average, and the fourth and fifth are unfavorable. The results indicate a big difference between the existing reality and the purposes of the country's development perspective document in the study area.
Conclusion
Since in this research, an attempt has been made to evaluate the nature-based tourism trend of Yazd Province with a realistic view of the current situation of the region; therefore, a comparative comparison has been made between the country's development perspective document and the fourth and fifth scenarios, which are at an unfavorable level. For this purpose, the possible situations selected for each key factor of the fourth and fifth scenarios have been compared with the purposes, strategies, policies, and action plans presented in the perspective document. Based on the results of the comparisons, at the level of setting purposes, the current trend of tourism in Yazd Province includes about 68% of the factors of the fourth and fifth scenarios. As a result, there is almost the same amount of overlap at the level of how to achieve the purposes.