The Identification and Analysis of the Factors Affecting the Supply Chain of Religious Tourism in Iran

This research aims to identify and analyze the factors that affect the supply chain of religious tourism in Iran. This applied research enjoys an exploratory mixed approach and a descriptive-correlation methodology. In the qualitative stage, the statistical population included 30 experts selected by objective judgment and snowball sampling method. In the quantitative stage, there were 950 religious tourism experts, out of whom 274 were determined to be the sample size based on the Krejcie and Morgan Table by simple random sampling. The structural equation modeling with Smart PLS3 software was used to analyze the relationships once the factors were identified using the Delphi method. The Delphi findings identified 98 factors in 10 dimensions (accommodation, transportation, tourism centers, reception in shopping centers, environment and energy, travel agencies and tours, security and safety, management and economy, and information and communication) that affect the supply chain of Iranian religious tourism. Also, the structural equations results revealed that the 10 aforementioned dimensions affected this supply chain positively and significantly by (0.495), (0.307), (0.386), (0.394), (0.361), (0.344), (0.332), (0.372), (0.420), and (0.389), respectively.