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The present study seeks to investigate the role of cultural-historical attractions of rural destinations in the development of cultural tourism in the rural areas. This is an applied research conducted in a descriptive-analytical method. Based on studies on two cities of Mashhad and Binalud, 14 rural areas with­ historical and cultural attractions were selected as the sample. Using Cochran's formula, the volume of tourists and the host community was determined 196 and 222 respectively. The scope of analysis in this study was "households". The data acquired from questionnaires were analyzed using the statistical analysis methods. The findings show that in these villages, attractions, facilities, services and cultural factors higher than the moderate level, can totally have a positive effect on socio-cultural, cultural-environmental development and development of cultural tourism in general. Besides, in ARAS model for socio-cultural dimension of cultural tourism, the village of Miami was on the top, and the village of Chahak was in the last place. Also according to the research findings, despite many problems in the study area, taking care of the facilities and rural infrastructure of the villages with tourist attractions and relevant advertisements in Mashhad ­can make way for growth of cultural tourism

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between sustainable tourism development and improvement of social welfare indices based on structural equation analysis. Based on the new theoretical approaches, some hypotheses have been developed that this research is descriptive and correlational. The population of the study consisted of all the inhabitants of the villages of Koohrang city with 5 persons. Researcher-made questionnaires (using existing theoretical background) on tourism development, social welfare were used as research tools. Statistical analysis was performed based on structural equation using Spss and Amos software. The results showed that there is a significant relationship between tourism development and social, economic, legal, educational, demographic and social dimensions of social welfare. Also the regression values of the structural model indicate that the variable of rural tourism development among the social welfare dimensions has the most effect on the social dimension (ß=0.42) and then on the demographic dimension (ß=0.40) and economic dimension (ß=0.34) respectively.  legal dimension (V=0.28), biological dimension (ß=0.27) and least impact on educational welfare dimension (ß=0.24).