Factors Affecting the Development of Health Tourism and Its Effects on Society's Well-being

Background & objectives:  

Due to its competitive advantage and increasing prosperity, health tourism is more critical for countries than other forms of tourism. Identifying factors affecting the development of health tourism and its effects on society's well-being is the aim of the research.

The current research has a mixed and inductive approach. The statistical population of the research in the qualitative phase included university professors, health tourism managers, and specialists. In the quantitative stage, tourism companies, hoteliers, trustees, and employees of health and treatment centers were present. In the qualitative stage, 15 participants were selected using the snowball method, and in the quantitative stage, 306 participants were selected using the stratified sampling method. Data was collected using interviews and questionnaires. Data analysis was done in the qualitative stage with the help of Maxqda-10 software and then using the structural equation method, and in the quantitative stage with SPSS and SmartPLS software.

 In the interviews, the codes of health and treatment facilities, with 41 repetitions, and the codes of development of relations and tourism infrastructure, with 26 and 21 repetitions, respectively, were the most frequent. On the other hand, the codes of service specialization and safety compliance with two repetitions were the least frequent. With open coding, 100 codes were extracted and categorized into 20 main concepts, and the main concepts of the research were identified. In the quantitative phase, the results of Cronbach's alpha coefficient and the combined reliability of the variables, considering the limits of 0.6 and 0.7, with the SmartPLS method for these two criteria in all research structures are more than 0.8 and acceptable.

Conclusion:

The research results show that the development of health tourism is considered a tool for the development of society. It also leads to increased investment in the society's political, social, cultural, and economic sectors, creating employment, income, satisfaction, and vitality. Welfare development also improves their quality of life and well-being.