This study set out to investigate the effect of familiarity with a country’s culture on the images created in the minds of the foreign tourists visiting there, and the improvement of the public images made of smaller geographical units of that country such as its provic More
This study set out to investigate the effect of familiarity with a country’s culture on the images created in the minds of the foreign tourists visiting there, and the improvement of the public images made of smaller geographical units of that country such as its provices as well. To this end, Gilan province was selected as the population of the study to research on. To collect the required data for testing the three hypotheses defined for this study, a 24-item questionnaire was administered on some 218 foreign tourists who visited different cities of Gilan province. The hypotheses and relationship between the research variables were analyzed through PLS software, using structural equation modeling techniques. The findings of the study suggested that familiarity with Iranian culture could improve Iran’s image and that of the Gilan province in the mind of a foreign tourist. Moreover, the impact of the Iran’s image on Gilan’s image was confirmed.
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