Green Zoning: A New Approach to Dealing with the Corona Epidemic Challenges in Health Tourism Areas (Geographical Area: Sabalan Mountain Spa Cities)

The outbreak of the corona virus was a widespread crisis that affected all geographical areas. Many countries implemented various measures and strategies, one of the most successful and up-to-date being green zoning. Green zoning is one of the zoning methods in different geographical areas that is dynamic and temporary and by implementing different mechanisms and strategies, minimizes the problems and risks caused by the corona epidemic. The main purpose of this study is to present a green zoning approach to deal with the challenges of the Corona epidemic in the health tourism areas of spa cities. The approach used in research, is a sequential exploratory approach that uses the qualitative method of thematic analysis in the first phase and the quantitative survey method in the second phase. The main tool used in the qualitative phase is a semi-structured interview and in the quantitative phase is a questionnaire, which was extracted from 11 experts in the qualitative phase and 23 in the quantitative phase, respectively, relevant information and data. According to the research findings, in the qualitative phase of the semi-structured interviews, 67 indicators were identified, from which 22 basic themes, 8 organizing themes and 3 global themes were extracted. In the quantitative phase, the weight and importance of the studied indicators were studied and analyzed using Shannon entropy and fuzzy TOPSIS techniques. From the results of the present study, we can identify the dimensions and indigenous components of this type of zoning, which were obtained using the opinions of experts and scientific methods. Also, pointed to the situation of the cities at the foot of Sabalan Mountain, which in terms of the obtained indicators, the city of Sarein is in a favorable or good range and according to the components of green zoning, can work to provide health tourism services.