Identifying tourism attractions is a basic requirement in the local and national community toward balanced and harmonious development of land potential. This study aimed to evaluate the tourism attractions of Gharahsoo watershed in Golestan province, northeast of Iran, based on the impact and effectiveness of environmental criteria. After determination of criteria and preparation of layers, criteria analysis was done based on the impacts and effectiveness of the criteria using DEMATEL method. Entropy Shannon method was used for weighting criteria. Finally, the spatial analysis was done by employing the TOPSIS method. The results showed that landform and plant density, in terms of the impact, and access to facilities, in terms of the effectiveness, have priority over the other criteria. Also, the criteria weighting results showed that the criteria access to facilities, landform and plant density with the value 0.229, 0.147 and 0.123 are a priority to the other criteria, respectively. Finally, the results showed that, in terms of tourism attractions, the areas of the southern of Gharahsoo watershed are in suitable conditions and the rest of the area, especially the northern parts, has unsuitable conditions.

One of the policies that has been taken into account by many countries to develop sustainable tourism is the development of touristic towns and villages in a centralized manner and the prevention of haphazard, unplanned contractions that destroy environment, sociocultural context, and economic structure of the touristic attraction sites. This policy was enacted by the Iranian cabinet in 2017. The purpose of this study was to present a methodology to identify the spaces suitable for the development of touristic towns and villages. The study was applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of methodology. As the input of the analytic model, the spatial territory of Mazandaran province was divided into 23007 spatial units, each covering 100 hectares. Then, the development of touristic towns and villages were evaluated and prioritized. In this article, the combined index of “the priority of the development of touristic towns and villages in Mazandaran province” was made by combining exploratory factor analysis and network analysis (F’ANP) based on 14 factors effective on the development of touristic towns and villages. The resulting map was then trimmed based on four control indices. The findings of the model showed that the three factors of “environmental potential and transportation infrastructure,” “the quantity and quality of serving the tourists,” and “tourism investment potential” are effective on the prioritization of Mazandaran province spaces in order to develop touristic towns and villages. The results of study demonstrated that the development of touristic towns and villages in this province is possible in the middle and eastern side of seashore, in limited areas in the eastern plains, and in the eastern and western mountainous lands.