Investigating the Factors Affecting the Development of Medical Tourism Using the System Dynamics Method and Evaluating Its Role in Economic Growth with the Benefit/Cost Index.

Medical Tourism is one of the growing types of tourism in the world that can bring different benefits to tourism objectives. Taking in consideration the appropriate potential of Iran in the field of medicine and the existence of cultural and natural attractions along with this capability, it is possible to turn this country with suitable planning, into one of the important destinations of medical tourism. The aim of this article is identifying the relationship and the impact of factors influencing the development of medical tourism and investigating the impact of it on the economic growth of the country. The research is developmental in nature, and based on theoretical studies and interviews with experts the factors and variables of the model have been extracted.  System dynamics method is used, and the software Vensim is used to simulate the ten-year horizon, in three scenarios, to examine the behavior of the variables. According to the results of this research, the development of medical tourism has a positive effect on the economic growth indicators of the country, and with increasing the revenue allocation of tourism industry to medical tourism, the value of benefit- cost indicator increases. In addition, with private sector investment in the medical tourism sector, the value of benefit cost index in the short term decreases slightly due to increased costs. However, due to the increase in the slope of the benefit-to-cost chart after the investment, the value of the benefit- cost index will be higher in the long term than before the investment. Also, by increasing the employment rate, the value of the benefit to the cost indicator increases, and by reducing the employment rate, the value of the benefit indicator decreases.