Investigating the Role of Residents' Support for Health Tourism Development in Marketing Using the Cognitive Mapping Approach: A Case Study of Isfahan’s Healthcare Town

Focusing on "the residents' support for the development of health tourism" as a variable that could be considered by marketers to increase demands for this kind of tourism, this study sought to investigate the variables affected by the residents' support and prepare a fuzzy cognitive map of such factors using a systemic model. To this end, the aforementioned variables were identified using the Delphi technique. Then, the research model was developed and analyzed using fuzzy cognitive mapping. The findings of the study suggested that the residents' support affected factors such as the destination image, tourist satisfaction, tourist loyalty, positive advertisements by word of mouth, perceived quality of services, tourists' emotional solidarity with the residents, and spatial belonging of tourists to destinations. Moreover, the results of fuzzy cognitive mapping showed that in a system consisting of the above-mentioned variables, the residents' support played a significant role in tourist loyalty and positive word-of-mouth advertisement, with its impact being greater than that of satisfaction or even service quality. In other words, winning the residents' support is a priority in this regard. Moreover, residents' support affects other relevant factors, including perceived quality, tourist satisfaction, spatial belonging, and emotional attachment. Therefore, gaining the residents’ support is highly recommended to be considered in marketing health tourism. Considering the research gaps in this field, the results of the current study could be used for enriching the related literature.