Identifying the challenges and obstacles of religious tourism in the sustainable development of Mehran based on the grounded theory model

Today, tourism has become one of the largest, most attractive and most profitable industries in the world economy And it is considered the impellent of positive changes in geographical spaces, including urban spaces. Therefore, today in the economy of many countries such as Iran, which depend on the export of a single product such as oil, Tourism development can generate a lot of income. The city of Mehran By having important location and border and customs terminal and the shortest distance from important pilgrimage cities and the political capital of Iraq. are known with the dominant performance of services based on export, import and transportation of goods and passengers; Especially religious tourists for the huge procession of Arbaeen and Atbat - e Aliayat. So that every year more than 70% of several million religious tourists transit From Mehran city for Arbaeen. Therefore, identifying the obstacles and factors preventing the development of religious tourism in this city as the goal of this research is very important for its sustainable physical, economic, socio-cultural and environmental development. This research is descriptive-analytical in quiddity and practical in terms of purpose And the data and information were obtained using the library method and in-depth interview. The method used in this research is "grounded theory" or "contextual theory". The statistical population of this research includes 18 knowledgeable and expert people who were also active in the field of religious tourism and were selected by purposeful sampling. The interview with the target community continued until the saturation limit was reached, and the content analysis method was used to analyze the data. The data obtained from the interview was open, central and selective triple coding and 53 concepts and 8 categories were obtained from the data. The results of this research indicate the existence of a four-dimensional structure that includes obstacles; Economic, socio-cultural, infrastructure-management and environment. The results of this research can help the policy makers to adopt smarter policies and strategies in order to remove the mentioned obstacles for the mutual sustainable development of religious and urban tourism.