Investigating and Analyzing Cultural Dimensions Affecting the Attraction of Iraqi Medical Tourists to Ahvaz City

The present study aims to investigate and analyze the cultural dimensions affecting the attraction of these tourists. This research is applied-theoretical in terms of objectives, and descriptive-analytical in terms of research method. The research findings showed that among the influential cultural dimensions, general (ethnic) culture, professional culture and national (Iranian-Islamic) culture had the highest effects on attracting Iraqi medical tourists. The results of SEM also showed that research independent variables account for 35% of the variance of attracting Iraqi medical tourist. In other words, research independent variables have high ability to explain the variance of attracting Iraqi medical tourist variable. Moreover, the effect of independent variables on attracting medical tourists was statistically significant (p≥ 0.05). Therefore, the effect of national cultural variables, political culture, organizational culture, general culture, and professional culture on attracting Iraqi medical tourists was confirmed. Considering the effect size of the independent variables, it can be stated that the effect of general, professional and national culture variables on attracting Iraqi medical tourists is direct and high medium, while the effect of political and organizational culture variables on this variable is direct and low medium.