The Effect of Cultural Values on the Perceived Quality of Health Tourism Services Case study: Sarein

The globalization of healthcare has led to the emergence of a new form of tourism known as health tourism. Given the special importance of tourism and especially health tourism and the resulting economic benefits, the quality factor can be important and fundamental. Among the factors that can affect the quality of health tourism services are cultural values. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect of cultural values ​​on the perceived quality of health tourism services in Sarein city, which is done using Hofstede culture model and Padma service quality model. The statistical population of this study includes all domestic tourists who entered the city of Sarein in the period of June and early July of 2018. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect data and out of 400 distributed questionnaires, 372 people answered the questionnaires. Structural equations and LISREL software were used for data analysis. The results show that the relationship between pleasure-seeking/self-control and perceived quality of health tourism services is significant and positive. Also, a positive and significant relationship between long-term/ short-term orientation, degree of ambiguity acceptance, power distance, masculinity/ feminism and individualism/collectivism with the perceived quality of health tourism services was confirmed.