For the past two decades, the notion of rural tourism has been a subject of increasing interest in European and world scientific and professional literature. However, a consensus on the terminological definition of rural tourism, as well as other closely related notions, has not been reached yet. Hence, one of the main goals of this dissertation was to explain the terminological issues and the importance of rural tourism in the theoretical sense, as well as to analyse and systematise the existing scientific knowledge and contributions of rural tourism and the important way it influences the economic growth of the rural area. The main focus of this doctoral dissertation was to explore the development of rural tourism of Continental Croatia from the point of view of creators and co-creators of the national tourist policy and owners of guest farms and ranches, all of which is insufficiently explored from a theoretical and empirical perspective. Apart from the theoretical explication of notions related to rural tourism, the goal of the dissertation was also to explore positive experiences of institutional support in rural tourism development in Europe. Considering the research subject, the goals of this dissertation were to identify current and future determinants for the development of rural tourism in Continental Croatia and to examine the institutional support in this process, as well as to analyse the course and influence of rural tourism on the economy of this region. Another goal of the dissertation was to analyse the level of rural tourism development in Continental Croatia. By carrying out an empirical research in Continental Croatia and by applying the adequate scientific methods, the goal was to create and analyse a perception index for the attractiveness of rural tourist offer. From a theoretical and empirical point of view, the goal of this dissertation was to draft a model of rural tourism development in Continental Croatia and to formulate a public policy suggestion oriented towards its development. Findings of the empirical analysis of rural tourism development in Continental Croatia on an appropriate sample of 30 examinees (creators and co-creators of tourist sector development) show that rural tourism in the Republic of Croatia develops slower than its possibilities should allow, in spite of the rich tourist resource basis in rural areas. An underlying cause of the current situation can be found in the fact that the national tourism policy and all former strategies were focused on 3S tourism product (sun, sea and sand). Research results show that the basic five components of institutional support in rural tourism of Continental Croatia have all been negatively rated, which confirms the hypothesis H1: Institutional support in rural tourism development in Continental Croatia is underdeveloped. It has been affirmed that all defined components represent an equally important constraint in the development process, which rejects the hypothesis H1a: The major constraint in rural tourism development from the perspective of creators and co-creators of tourist sector development is the unidentified strategy of rural tourism development. The analysis of primary research results on a sample of 107 owners of guest farms and ranches has shown that a high percentage of the examinees consider rural tourism to be an important generator of economic growth, investments and new employment opportunities in the rural area, which resulted in accepting the hypothesis H2: Guest farm and ranch owners do perceive rural tourism as an important generator of economic growth, investment, or new employment opportunities. By applying nonparametric tests related to hypothesis H3, it has been confirmed that there is a statistically important difference between the age and professional qualifications of the examinees, but not between gender, legal form, seeking of expert or financial help and membership in organisation for promotion of tourism on rural area. Testing out hypothesis H3: Inherited factors are perceived as the most important determinant of tourist offer in rural tourism of Continental Croatia; the analysis of differences between indexes calculated through factor analysis of attraction factors has shown that inherited factors are not perceived as the most important determinant of tourist offer in rural tourism of Continental Croatia, hence hypothesis H3 was rejected. Since testing the normality of distributions for certain indexes (number 3 and 4) has shown that the distribution deviates from the norm, testing socio-demographic differences on the indexes was done by using nonparametric tests. Gender differences for normally distributed indexes have been tested by applying the t-test, whereas other differences were tested using the Mann-Whitney U-test. The analysis shows that there is a strong similarity between individual demographic categories, because the differences appear only between men and women on the third and fifth index. When testing out the given results for hypothesis H1b: The most important constraint for rural tourism development from the perspective of guest farm and ranch owners are the law regulations; it has been shown that inadequately defined law regulations are placed only at 5th on the scale of constraining factors in guest farm and ranch business activity. In order to check the differences between average assessments of constraining factors, confidence intervals have been established. It has been affirmed that, on the confidence level of 95 percent, inadequate law regulations represent one of major constraining factors, but still not the most important one. This does not confirm hypothesis H1b. However, the same analysis has confirmed hypothesis H4: Owners of guest farms and ranches consider the lack of marketing knowledge and activities as an important constraint in improving their business. Testing hypothesis H5: Owners of guest farms and ranches consider that establishing tourism clusters is not important for rural tourism development; showed that examinees value the benefit of interest grouping in encouraging the exchange of information, knowledge, and technologies between members of a group with the highest average assessment of 2,84, whereas the lowest average assessment of 2,12 was given for the benefit of favourable exchange of goods and services. Factor analysis determined one latent component, assertions have been added up, all of which resulted in a perception index for cluster grouping. Based on total average assessment of 17,02 of perception index for cluster grouping, it can be concluded that hypothesis H5 is confirmed. By calculating nonparametric Mann-Whitney U-test correlation, it has been confirmed that examinees with higher education degree are on average more prone to believe that cluster grouping can be beneficial for certain aspects of business. What consequently follows from theoretical knowledge and empirical results of this research is a Model of rural tourism development in Continental Croatia, based on platform of four development components (institutional framework, marketing, interest groups and education system) and on the approach of organised grouping on local, regional, and national level. Moreover, primary and secondary results of this research culminate in public policy suggestions which are aimed towards encouraging rural tourism development in Continental Croatia. Conducted empirical research and presented results show a significant step towards identifying the level of rural tourism development in Croatia, and consequently serve as a platform for future research in this, still insufficiently studied scientific area.