Designing a Leveling Model for Factors Affecting Strategic Entrepreneurship in Health Tourism

The development of health tourism can be considered as a national strategy in order to increase the country's income as an economic arm, and health tourism is today one of the fastest growing sectors of industry and tourism in the world, which makes the organizations involved and countries interested in tourism development to pay attention to this part of the tourism industry and plan for it, and it is also one of the areas that health activists always emphasize on its expansion and improvement, and identifying the factors affecting strategic entrepreneurship in health tourism can play a great role in the field of health. This study aimed to design a model for leveling the factors affecting the strategic entrepreneurship of health tourism.

The present study is a qualitative study based on interpretive structural modeling method during June to September 2020. The ISM standard questionnaire was used to collect data and Mick Mac software was used for interpretive structural analysis. The participants in the study were 11 people who were selected by non-random, snowball method.

According to the results of research literature and obtaining the opinion of relevant experts, service quality, competitive advantage, stakeholders, infrastructure, rules/regulations, tourist attractions, technology, and entrepreneurial management were identified as influential factors in health tourism entrepreneurship. Then, the final model was drawn using interpretive structural modeling.

The quality of health tourism services and gaining a competitive advantage were considered as first level variables and entrepreneurial management was determined as the most basic element of the model.