Sociological study on the socio-cultural consequences of religious tourism using the Grounded theory

One of the most important tourist attractions that has a significant role in tourism activities is religious tourism. Religious Tourism means traveling pilgrims to important religious places. This thesis is aimed at identifying the negative cultural-social consequences of religious tourism in the city of Qom. In this research, grounded theory has been used to analyze data and the data collection and data analysis processes are completely interdependent, also the primary analysis of data is the basis for collecting data. For open coding, documentary analysis method in two stages of axial coding and selective coding has been used. The coded data is grouped with other data, based on their common features. Based on the views of people in the study attempting to expand concepts and study the relationships of variables. This research carried out with an interpretive-constitutive approach and qualitatively method, also has used the grounded theory approach to conduct research and analyze data. In this research, 41 officials, clerics, professors, experts and citizens of Qom have completed the interview. The result shows that from the viewpoint of interviewers, tourism don’t have significant negative impact on the city of Qom and has more positive effects. Finally, the study tries to made proposals to promote religious tourism in Qom.