Analysis of indicators affecting the attraction of Iran's medical tourism from selected countries in the Asian region

The health tourism market has been proposed as one of the most profitable and competitive industries in the world and is one of the new areas of tourism which has contributed to the sustainable development and dynamism of countries' economies and is taking steps towards increasing the income of countries. This field of tourism includes the sub-branches of health tourism, natural healing tourism, and medical tourism. Today, according to the development of tourism and medical science, medical tourism has attracted the attention of many developed and developing countries; Therefore, the purpose of this research is to analyze the indicators that influence the attraction of medical tourism in Iran.Design/methodology/approach: In this article, with an analytical-descriptive approach and using the panel data method and Eviews 12 software to analyze data, it has been tried to present a research model of cross-sectional data related to 15 selected countries of the Asian region (Armenia, Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Oman, Qatar, Kazakhstan, Georgia) which have had medical tourism relations with Iran during the period of 1378-1400.

The results of the present research show that the variables of income with the most influence and then the exchange rate coefficient of the destination country, political security, health costs of the country of origin and destination, the exchange rate of the country of origin, the ability of personnel and the inflation index of the destination country, respectively, are among the influencing factors. Among them, the indicators of income, political security, health cost of the country of origin, exchange rate of the country of origin, and the ability of personnel have a positive effect. Additionally, the destination country's exchange rate, destination country's health cost, and destination country's inflation have a negative effect on attracting medical tourism.Originality/value: Most of the studies conducted in health tourism, of which medical tourism is a part, have been examined in a general way and medical tourism has been studied less, in addition, the studies conducted in this field are in the form of a survey and the information related to medical tourism is collected using a questionnaire. Therefore, it lacked modeling in the present study.