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crime was established. The findings also improved
the relationships between increasing law enforce-
ment employees and crime reduction.
Reza and Jawaid (2013) have investigated the
impact of terrorism activities on tourism in Paki-
stan using the annual time series data from the
period of 1980 to 2010. The results indicated a
significant negative impact of terrorism on tour-
ism both in the long and short run. The result of
rolling window estimation method showed that
terrorism has negative coefficients throughout the
sample period.
Anuar et al. (2012) worked on safety aspect of
the urban tourism using Safe City Programme in
Putrajaya since year 2004. The results showed that
respondents believed crime prevention steps in
Safe City Programme are important approaches to
ensure the tourist's safety.
Milman et al. (1999) studied on central Florida's
tourists regarding their overall sense of perceived
safety and the impact of various safety devices on
their overall feelings of safety while on vacation.
Previous exposure to crime had an impact on the
perception of safety. The findings approved certain
physical and behavioral devices such as deadbolt
locks, closed-circuit TV cameras, door view ports,
caller screening by telephone operators, locked side
entrances into the hotel, and routine visits to the
hotel by police provided tourists with a greater
sense of safety and security.
Despite of the great virgin and gifted tourism
attractions like unique climate conditions, attrac-
tive and beautiful four seasons natural landscapes,
thick forests, numerous watering places and ther-
mal springs, extensive and beautiful Caspian sea
shore, sociable and cultured people, neighboring
with countries around Caspian sea, and relation
with middle east, Mazandaran has some chal-
lenges in the area of tourism security. Therefore,
the present study attempts to find the answers to
the following questions: What are the challenges of
tourism development in terms of security in Maz-
andaran? What strategies can be opted to over-
come these challenges?
The aim of this study is to identify challenges
of tourism security in Mazandaran and to identify
strategies to overcome the security challenges using
the Delphi method. The findings of this study will
be of interest to researchers, policy makers, and
planners of the tourism industry in Iran.
Mazandaran. The population was the members
of Permanent Center of Province Trip Facilities
(governor generals, mayors, governors and their
representatives) and tourism experts. Using the
Snowball sampling technique, twenty seven peo-
ple were selected as sample. A questionnaire was
used in the four steps. The first questionnaire
included 2 open questions: 1) in your opinion,
what are the challenges of tourism development in
terms of security in Mazandaran? 2) What strat-
egies can be used to overcome these challenges?
In the first step, twenty three out of twenty seven
members of the panel answered the questions (a
return rate of 85%). In the second step, the panel
members combined the similar questions into one.
Finally, 10 questions were left to assess the chal-
lenges and 6 questions to assess the strategies that
could be used to increase the security of tourism
development. Then the questionnaire was returned
to the panel members in the form of Likert Scale
(a little
=
1, little
=
2, average
=
3, much
=
4, very
much
5) in order to rank the questions. Ques-
tions with Standard Deviation less than 1 (SD
=
<
1) were considered as consensus questions by the
panel members. Twenty three questionnaires were
designed to reach consensus. In the third step the
panel members were asked whether they agree
or disagree with the rankings of the questions in
the questionnaires of the second step. Those who
agreed returned the questionnaires without any
explanation. But those who disagreed explained
their reasons and then returned the questionnaires.
In total fourteen questionnaires were used with a
response rate of approximately 62 percent.
The fourth step was the final summing-up step
regarding the adjusted questions of the question-
nairein thethird step. To analyzes the data, descrip-
tive statistics and SPSS were employed. The validity
of the questionnaires in each step was proved by
some professors of tourism planning. Regarding
the reliability of the questionnaires with Delphi
method, Dalkey (1969) says when the number of
a Delphi group is more than thirteen experts; the
reliability coefficient is also more than 80 percent
(a
≥
%80).
3 CASE STUDY
Mazandaran is in the north of Iran located on the
southern coast of the Caspian Sea and surrounded
by Golestan, Semnan, Tehran, Alborz, Qazvin,
and Gilan provinces. Sari is the largest city and the
capital of the province. It is one of the most densely
populated provinces in Iran and has diverse natu-
ral resources, especially large reservoirs of oil and
natural gas. The province's four largest cities are
Sari, Babol, Amol and Qaemshahr. Founded as a
2
MATERIAL AND METHODS
The present study is descriptive-analytic and the
data is collected through library and field research.
The Delphi method was applied in four steps to rank
the security challenges of tourism development in
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