Analysis of a Structural Model for Measuring Agro-Ecotourism Development in the Municipality of Jardín, Antioquia

The identification of factors that evaluate agro-ecotourism development (AD) becomes a necessity to plan tourism in rural areas and strengthen public policy guidelines. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the factors that define agro-ecotourism development in the municipality of Jardín (Antioquia, Colombia) based on the potentialities and constraints evaluated in 149 rural properties and their owners, using a structural equation model. According to the findings, agro-ecotourism development is the reflection of individual capabilities (IC) with a weight of 1 and residents’ perception (RP) with a weight of 0.72. However, infrastructural development (weight 0.44) and farm resources (weight 0.51) reflect this to a lesser extent. In conclusion, the AD is mainly determined by IC and RP, and it is necessary to improve infrastructure and diversify resources on the farms for greater prosperity in terms of AD.