Identifying Perceived Risks of Potential Tourists about Iran as a Tourism Destination (Mixed Method Approach)

Risk is inherent component of traveler's destination choice. Tourism destinations differ in many aspects: their location, economic condition, cultural and political status and crime. Given these differences, the analysis of destination risk and its dimensions is of substantial interest. This study explores perceived risk dimensions about Iran as a tourism destination using mixed methods of qualitative content analysis and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. 60 respondents participated in the qualitative study and the quantitative study included 620 potential tourists. The mixed results of qualitative and quantitative studies indicated that potential tourists perceive eight types of risk about Iran. These risks include risk of human rights violation, satisfaction risk, risk of inappropriate dress, social risk, risk of inaccessibility to cash, crime risk, communication risk and risk of securing visa. Iran as an ancient and historical tourist destination has major heritage assets which includes an exotic and diverse culture as well as natural attractions. In spite of these facts, it has experienced a significant fall in its international tourism market share since the Islamic revolution in 1977. From a psychological perspective, risk perception level of tourists affects their choice of international vacation destination (Somnez & Graefe, 1998). Safety is one of the most important conditions for tourism development (Fletcher & Morakabati, 2008). Destinations, which are perceived as risky locations, will have a serious deterrent impact on tourist attraction (Rittichainuwat & Chakraborty, 2009). Risk perception has been considered as ''situation- specific'' (Dowling, 1986). As stated above, Iran as a tourist destination has its own specific political, social and religious attributes. Thus, the question is what kind of risks do potential tourists perceive when deciding whether to visit Iran or not? The main purpose of this survey is to investigate risk perceptions of potential tourists for traveling to Iran as a tourism destination. For this purpose, a two-stage mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) was used and the members of couch-surfing virtual community (www.couchsurfing.com) participated in both qualitative and quantitative studies. In the first study, the e-survey contains eighteen open-ended questions in order to produce textual data. Textual data was gathered using convenience sampling method. The sampling continued to saturate the responses until no new finding was obtained. Finally, sixty respondents participated in the qualitative study. The textual data was analyzed by inductive content analysis method and themes of risks were extracted. In the second study, the themes extracted from the previous study were used to generate the items of self-administrated questionnaire. Electronic version of the quantitative questionnaire included 40 items to measure dimensions of perceived risk. Seven hundred respondents who had visited the virtual tourism community participated in the quantitative study in July-August 2013. The required data for the second study was gathered through simple random sampling method among the various groups of the virtual tourism community. Discussion and The first factor was labeled ''risk of violation of human rights'' and included the items that were associated with violation of human rights by the government; being arrested as spy; strict adherence to Islamic rules, misbehavior by Iranian officials; fear of radical individuals and incompatibility between cultural values of tourists and Iranian society. The second factor included those items that reflected “satisfaction risk”. The third factor was composed of five items which emphasize the consequences of traveling to Iran in relation to the dress. These associated consequences included fear of violating dress code in Iran, sexual discrimination, fear of punishment for not knowing clothing rules as well as adapting to the local clothing code and the possibility that Iranian authorities may misinterpret these tourist dress actions. The result indicates that the third factor would best be labeled as ''risk of inappropriate dress''. The fourth factor was identified as ''social risk'' and included those items that emphasized disapproval of others for visiting Iran. The fifth factor was associated with unavailability of credit cards and ATMs, difficulty in carrying cash, money transfer problems and risk of overpricing for goods and services. The fifth factor was labeled as ''risk of inaccessibility to cash''. Two additional items such as pick-pocketing and loss of property risk and corruption and extortion risk measured the sixth factor which was labeled as ''crime risk''. Three items were included in the seventh dimension (Communication Risk) or communication problem with local people. These items included problem with understanding of guide signs, difficulty in finding a tour guide, and having a guide who can communicate with tourists in their mother tongue. The eighth and final factor was associated with visa problems. The items of cost of securing visa, lack of consular services in order to get Iranian visa and waiting a long time to secure Iranian visa might be led to losing the opportunity to visit other destinations and securing of other countrie's visa may be restricted due to visiting of Iran. These items were associated with uncertainty with regard to visa. As a result, the eighth dimension was identified as '' risk of securing visa''. The results indicate that potential tourists perceived Iran as a destination with several types of risks including violation of human rights, satisfaction risk, risk of inappropriate dress, crime risk, and risk of inaccessibility to cash, social risk, communication risk and risk of securing visa. the present survey contributes to the existing body of tourist's risk perception knowledge in two ways. First, the survey confirms four types of risk, which have been studied in prior researches. These risks include crime risk, communication risk, satisfaction risk and social risk. Second, it enhances the tourist risk literature by conceptualizing and measuring four new types of risk that include risk of human rights violation, risk of inappropriate dress, risk of inaccessibility to cash and risk of securing visa.