Journal of Economic & Management Perspectives, 2018, Volume 12, Issue 3, 5-12.
Journal of Economic & Management Perspectives ISSN 2523-5338 © International Economic Society
http://www.econ-society.net
5
ABSTRACT
As a development strategy for rural areas, the importance of agricultural tourism / farm tourism has been increasing
day by day. For the healthy development of this growing area, putting out weak points of the system is important.
Because of this, farm tourism experiences of the operators and visitors have been examined in this study. The
reasons why the farmers operating within the organization of Tatuta (Agriculture- tourism- exchange project) are
working in a different sector (tourism) in addition to the agriculture sector that is, what their targets are the first
sub-objective of this research. To what extent these targets are reached constitutes the second sub-objective of the
research. Among different qualitative research approaches, phenomenology was applied in this study. The reason
for choosing phenomenology as a research pattern is that personal experiences are the main focus in this research
design. Two separate sample groups were selected for the study's two research questions. In the selection of the
first sample group, criterion-based sampling was used from objective sampling strategies and easily accessible
sampling strategy was used in selecting the second sample group. Audiovisual materials were used as data
collection tools. The data obtained from the farm owners and visitors was subjected to content analysis. At the end
of the study, it has been seen that visitors’ farm tourism experiences are generally positive. Although some farms
have been criticized in some cases, this rate is rather low. On the other hand, among the diversification reasons,
the most important factor that pushes farmers to diversification is environmental factors. Besides, farm owners
have reached almost all of their goals of turning to farm tourism. It has been seen that farm owners' farm tourism
experiences are generally positive.
JEL Classification: N50; L83.
Keywords: Tourism; Agriculture; Farm Tourism; Content Analysis; TaTuTa; WWOOF.
*Corresponding Author. This essay is the summary of the doctoral thesis called ‘The Evaluation of Farm Tourism
in Turkey Within The Scope of Rural Tourism: A Research on Tatuta Farms’ accepted by the Institute of Social
Sciences in Selcuk University.
1. INTRODUCTION
Providing a farm for leisure and recreational use is generally regarded as farm tourism and the using rural areas
within the scope of farm tourism is important both for rural development and for sustainability. In this context,
there are farms which operates in Turkey connected Tatuta. Tatuta means agriculture-tourism-exchange and it is a
project initiated by Bugday Association in 2002. This project has purposes such as providing additional income to
the families operating in agriculture sector, realization of the labor force and carrying out exchange of knowledge
and experience. Most of the studies in the context of farm tourism in Turkey are related to the TaTuTa farms
(Ahmadova ve Akova, 2016; Selvi ve Demirer, 2012; Artuğer vd., 2013; Tetik ve Girgin, 2010; Çeltek, 2014,
Civelek, 2013) and the numbers of these studies are few. Besides, none of them is about the farm tourism
experiences of farmers and visitors of these farms. As Turkey is an agricultural country, it has a very good potential
for farm tourism. Because of this, the number of businesses operating on farm tourism increases day by day. It is
thought that it would be beneficial to examine the farm tourism experiences of both the visitors and the operators
of this growing area for the current situation assessment.
A Study on the Farm Tourism Experience of Farmers and Visitors
in Turkey
Gulsun YILDIRIM*
Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, Ardesen Vocational School, Rize, Turkey, Email:
gulsun.yildirim@erdogan.edu.tr; TEL: +90 464 715 1617-2521.
Ceyhun C. KILINC
Selcuk University, Faculty of Tourism, Alaeddin Keykubat Campus, Selcuklu, Konya,
Turkey, Email: ceyhunkilinc@selcuk.edu.tr; TEL: +90 332 223 44 23.