The Role of Health Tourism Policy in Economic and Social Development Based on Resistance Economic Strategies

Health tourism as one of the most important sectors in the tourism can be of high importance in research area of resistance economy in the country in view of important indicators such as employment, entrepreneurship, economic growth, improving the business environment, reducing dependency of the state budget on oil and attracting domestic and foreign capital. The aim of the research is to explain the role of health tourism policies in the development of a resistance economy. For this purpose, a combination of qualitative methods of thematic analysis and Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) has been used. The thematic analysis was conducted through coding of the interviews and other written documents resulted in the formation of 10 common themes (social justice, discourse, indigenous patterns, endogenous, macro policy, market share consolidation, entrepreneurship focus, knowledge-based, outsourcing, people-centered) Eventually, having undergone the stages in Interpretive Structural Modeling and the establishment of paired relationships, these themes were ranked in four levels from the most dependent and, at the same time, the most important themes to the most independent themes.