Identifying and Clustering the Main Points of View Towards War Tourism (Case Study: Rahian-e Noor Camps)

Abstract

During the last decade, tourism has always had an ascending approach in appealing new audiences. One of the types of tourism, which is considered the most popular type of tourism in this century, is war tourism. In Iran, war tourism is organized in the form of war tourism camps and is based on the memories and stories of the eight years of holy defense. Preserving the memory and sacrifices of the past generation is one of Iran's cultural priorities, and war tourism camp is one of the most important related cultural events in the country, which transmits these concepts to the new generation. Students and professors are among the influential groups in the society's culture and are among the main audiences of tourism, knowing more about their attitudes and views towards the war tourism can contribute to increase the productivity of this event and the satisfaction of tourists. In this regard, the aim of this study is to identify and categorize the views of the academic community towards war tourism camps. The method was to use Q approach to survey experts and categorize their views. Then, with k-means clustering algorithms, students' opinions have been analyzed with a larger sample size. According to the findings of Q analysis, 3 categories of views have been identified, and according to the outputs of the clustering algorithm, 5 clusters of views have been identified, and the generalities of these cases are very similar.

Keywords

• islamic culture
• war tourism
• academic community
• q method
• k-means clustering