Empirical investigation of tourists' perceived psychic distance of Iran as a tourism destination

The aim of the current study was to investigate the perceived psychic distance of potentialtourists in relation to Iran as a tourism destination. The concept of psychic distance refersto perceived similarities/ differences between specific destination and tourist's homecountry. The members of couch-surfing virtual community participated in this study. Thestatistical data were collected by convenience sampling method. This study contributes tothe body of knowledge by identifying the dimensions of perceived psychic distance inrelation to Iran. The results of exploratory and confirmatory analysis indicated that thesedimensions include infrastructure, culture and legal distance. Furthermore, the result ofone sample t- test revealed that international tourists perceive high psychic distance inrelation to Iran as a tourism destination. In addition, the result of one-way varianceanalysis showed that tourists from ten of the world's regions perceived different levels ofpsychic distance in relation to Iran. Tourists from the Middle East region perceived lesspsychic distance compared to other regions. These findings have several managerialimplications. First, development of Iranian tourism industry requires planning to reduceperceived psychic distance in terms of infrastructure, culture and legal aspects. Second,based on the lower psychic distance which is perceived by tourists from the Middle East,the Iranian tourism policy-makers can consider the region as a more accessible targetmarket.