Scenario Planning for Food Tourism in Iran’s Rural Areas: Ranking Strategies Using Picture Fuzzy AHP and COPRAS

Iran is a uniquely compelling case due to its ancient and diverse culinary heritage, coupled with a strategic national mandate to significantly boost tourism, making the development of this high-impact sector a crucial policy imperative. The present study adopts a scenario planning approach to first identify the key factors influencing food tourism in rural areas of Iran, then explores plausible future scenarios for rural tourism development, and finally ranks strategic alternatives for enhancing food tourism in these regions. Methodologically, the research combines a goal-oriented, descriptive-analytical approach with future study techniques. Data for the initial phase were collected through a literature review, field studies (surveys, interviews), and expert surveys, and subsequently analyzed using MICMAC and ScenarioWizard software tools. Strategic alternatives were then evaluated using Picture Fuzzy Sets (PFSs) and the COPRAS method based on six critical factors. The findings reveal that six primary factors—promotional activities, pricing, food quality, infrastructure, government support, and investment—play pivotal roles in advancing food tourism in rural Iran. Based on these six primary factors, the study constructs three future scenarios: optimistic, stagnant, and crisis-driven scenarios. In the third phase of the analysis, employing Picture Fuzzy COPRAS and Picture Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (PF-AHP), the results indicate that “food festivals and promotional campaigns” carry the greatest weight and are deemed the most influential in attracting tourists, whereas “investment” ranks the lowest. Following normalization and application of weights, COPRAS analysis identifies “improving the quality of tourism infrastructure” as the most effective strategy, receiving the highest score (464.0620). A sensitivity analysis further confirms that the overall ranking of the strategies remains stable despite changes in the criteria weights, with only minor shifts observed among mid-ranked alternatives. These results offer policymakers a practical decision-making tool to allocate limited resources efficiently and focus on high-impact strategies that support the sustainable development of food tourism in Iran’s rural areas.