Developing A Framework for Increasing the Foreign Tourists’ Tendency for Traveling to Iran with an Emphasis on Soft Power

Developed within the past decades as a key concept in international and power relations, soft power emphasizes diplomacy, culture, art, and propaganda instead of hard and coercive aspects of power. As soft power affects the international prestige and credit of countries, this applied exploratory study sought to elaborate on the role of soft power and its componential elements in attracting foreign tourists. The theoretical population of the study comprised fifteen experts in soft power and tourism who were selected via convenience sampling. To conduct the study, twenty-seven factors were identified by reviewing the related literature on tourism and soft power. The factors were then screened via the Binomial test, out of which seventeen factors were excluded due to their over 5% significance coefficient. The remaining ten factors were then analyzed using the cross-impact analysis (CIA) technique.The results of the study indicated that successful organization of political, artistic, scientific, sports, and literary events at the international level, the presence of foreign companies in the business environment of Iran, cyberspace and social networks, and improving tolerance among influential reference groups in society contributed the most to attracting tourists to Iran. The study was also replicated using the DEMATEL method, producing very similar results compared to the previous test, and the same four factors were identified as the most influential factors in attracting foreign tourists. It should be noted that the DEMATEL method and cross-impact analysis are based on a critical realism approach, considering the fact that they both enjoy structural analysis.