Analyzing the Role of Arbaeen Religious Tourism in the Sustainable Development of Transit-border Cities (Case Study: Mehran City)

Religious tourism is a very important factor in the development of cities. Because it has a high potential for attracting tourists and it is one of the most important and prosperous types of tourism which has had significant effects on various aspects of society. Today, in the economy of many countries that are facing the export of single products such as oil, Religious tourism can generate a lot of revenue for tourist areas. Mehran is one of the most suitable transit-border cities for tourist-pilgrimage activities; Especially as the border crossing of the great Arbaeen congress and also the main traffic of the pilgrims of Atbat-E-Aliat, It is also one of the safest areas in the west of the country for economic activities; Therefore, its development needs to be in the context of proper planning and principled management in order for sustainable urban development to have a spatial appearance in it. The aim of the present study is to assess and evaluate the role of religious tourism in the sustainable development of Mehran. The type of applied research and its method is descriptive-analytical in which survey and documentary methods have been used. The statistical population of this study is 17435 people living in Mehran and 376 samples have been estimated using Cochran's formula..To select statistical samples, simple random sampling method has been exploited and to analyze the information the sample T-test and the Friedman test with SPSS software. Findings and research results indicate a positive and significant relationship between religious tourism and sustainable urban development of Mehran; As with a level of significance of 0.000 and 99% confidence; on average The most favorable effect on physical-spatial indicators (3.36), socio-cultural (3.27) and economic (3.25), respectively, But in the environmental dimension (3.30), considering that the items studied are negative indicators of the index, it has had a negative and adverse effect and challenging the city with environmental instability.