Factors Affecting the Selection of Iran as a Tourist Destination: Using Structural Equation Modeling

Iran is ranked first as the cheapest tourist destination, 10th as world heritage, and the 26th most beautiful country in the world. however, it has attracted only 0.62 percent of tourist arrivals and 0.53 percent of the amount spent by international tourists in 2019. Also, an annual growth of about 30 percent in tourist arrivals is necessary to achieve the goal set in the 7th Development Plan of IRI. For extracting the effective criteria, proposing the structural equation model for tourist attraction, and examining the difference between the existing and the desired states of the identified criteria, a questionnaire was used to collect the opinions of tourists who were on flights leaving Iran after visiting (Convenience sampling). The data obtained from 143 questionnaires was analyzed using the factor analysis method. Ten criteria were identified as a result. Controlling these ten criteria leads to fulfilling 60 percent of tourists' desires. Then, the structural equation model of the relationship between the criteria was designed and fitted using structural equation modeling. Finally, a gap analysis was performed. It was found that there is a significant difference between the desired and the existing states of seven out of ten criteria, and the existing state of these seven criteria is lower than expected (desired) by foreign tourists. With 99 percent confidence, the fitted model shows the direct significant relationship and the strong effect of the identified criteria with/on the selection of Iran as a tourist destination.