Regional development policy with religious tourism approach A case study of the border city of Mehran

Religious tourism is one of the important characteristics of tourism, which includes a significant share of tourism activities. The border city of Mehran has a lot of room for growth and development in terms of religious tourism in terms of its geographical location (Atbat Gate). One of the great opportunities in the field of attracting religious tourists in this city is the Arbaeen walking ritual, which can contribute to regional development. have a significant impact. In this regard, the present thesis has studied the border city of Mehran with the aim of investigating regional development policies with the approach of religious tourism. The research method is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of method. The statistical population includes experts and senior managers of provinces and cities, 30 people were selected as the sample size by snowball method. Structural analysis method and pls software were used for data analysis. The results showed that among the obtained coefficients, the institutional effect obtained the highest score with a coefficient of 0.685, indicating that it has the highest impact on regional development. The economic index with a coefficient of 0.440 ranks second in terms of impact on regional development. Socio-cultural with a coefficient of 0.334 has the third degree of impact on regional development, and physical index with 0.287 and environmental index with 0.118 have an impact on regional development, respectively.