Interpret Impacts of Film Tourism on The Perceived Image of destination and The Motivation of Tourists to Travel to Azarbayejan-e- Sharghi Province

Tourism is an activity that has many social and cultural impacts in addition to economic benefits and employment. Tourism development can increase the welfare level of local communities, but attracting tourists requires different mechanisms. In marketing the tourism destination, attracting tourists requires many solutions, one of which is the use of media and especially film to promote tourism and introduce tourism destinations. According to Morgan and Pritchard (1998), placing a destination in a film is to finalize a tourism product. Product positioning is an emerging phenomenon and is defined as the planned inputs of products to movies or television shows that may affect product beliefs and/or behaviors (Balasubramanian, 1994). Its growth has led to a reduction in the effectiveness of traditional advertising techniques. (Kaikati et al, 2004) Films or television series can be interesting for the audience due to their spectacular exotic destinations, which can be interesting for the audience and increase their awareness of a particular destination and affect the destination image.Therefore, in this study, the factors and processes through which cinema movies such as “Tabriz in meh” and “Shahriar” can encourage and stimulate the audience to visit the places displayed in the movies and how they affect the perceived image of tourists from tourism destination and finally how the perceived image affects tourist`s motivation.

The present study is applied research according to its objectives and regards to how the data and information collected in this study, the study is descriptive - survey. The statistical population of this research was Tourists who have been visiting East Azerbaijan Province to visit the film tourism sites and have seen at least one of the two "Tabriz in meh" or "Shahriar" films. In this study, for collecting information library and internet sources was used and a questionnaire with a five-point Likert scale was used to collect data. To investigate the normality of the research data, the Shapiro–Wilk test using the SPSS 21 software has been done. Then in the analytical statistics of this study, a confirmatory factor analysis technique was used to examine the validity of the questionnaires. Also to investigate the effect of tourism on the destination image with the mediator of natural resources, public infrastructure, tourism infrastructure, and natural environment, as well as their effect on tourism motivation, Pearson correlation test, and Path analysis were used.

In this study, the data related to the Shapiro–Wilk test show that the distribution of the data will be normal. Therefore, parametric tests can be used. The findings show that film tourism is a significant predictor of film tourism by a regression coefficient (P<001, β = 0.502). As other findings show, natural resources with regression coefficient (P<001, β = 0.270); public infrastructure with regression coefficient (P<001, β = 0.202) is a significant predictor of film tourism, but tourism structures and social environment are not a significant predictor of film tourism. Also, in the final stage of natural resources with the regression coefficient (P<02, β =0.216); film tourism with a regression coefficient (P<001, β = 0.387) are a significant predictor of film tourism, but public infrastructure, tourism infrastructure, and social environment were not capable of predicting the tourism motivations of the film.

The results of this study in the conceptual model show that film tourism directly affects tourism motivation, in addition, film tourism affects the dimensions of the image including natural resources, public infrastructure, tourism infrastructure and social environment. The dimensions of natural resources and public infrastructure of the image index also have a direct impact on tourism motivation.The first finding of this study suggests that the impact of film tourism on tourists' motivation has a significant impact. This finding is consistent with previous studies (Macionis, 2004). Another finding of this study suggests that film tourism has a significant impact on the perceived image of the destination. This finding is consistent with previous studies (Bolan et al., 2011). Another finding of this study suggests that the perceived image has a significant impact on the motivation of tourists. This finding is consistent with previous studies (Wong & Hsu, 2010). The limitations of the research can be referred to as the time limit and access to the sample. Also, as the present study has been done in a specific time range, it is a cross-sectional survey. Therefore, the results cannot be extended to another time. In addition, this study used only a quantitative method for collecting and analyzing data. Therefore, future studies are proposed to study various tourist destinations and compare the results of this study, as well as qualitative and mixed methods, are used in gathering data and analyzing data.