Identifying the Mental Models of Co-creation tourism industry: Using Q Methodology

The purpose of this study is to identify the mental patterns of tourism industry co-creation. The present study is a mixed-exploratory study conducted using the Q-methodology. This research was conducted with the participation of ten professors familiar with the subject of the research as well as tourism experts. The discourse space of the present study was collected from a variety of sources and after evaluating and summarizing the discourse space, 39 terms were selected for the sample. Then, after collecting data from Q sorting, this information was analyzed using Q factor analysis. Distribution analysis showed that three distinct mental patterns can be identified among the research participants about mental patterns of tourism industry co-creation that explained about 76.903% of the total variance. These three mental models were named service development, customer value and organization,