Investigating the Pattern of Behavioral Factors in Accessible Tourism Development for People with Physical Disabilities: A Case Study of Tehran City

Participating in tourism activities is the undeniable right of all society members, including people with disabilities. However, sometimes factors related to people with disabilities or inappropriate social environment for acceptance of these people as community members prevent them from participating in tourism activities. In this regard, this study sought to identify such factors (under the title of behavioral factors) and investigate their role in the development of accessible tourism for people with physical disabilities, using a mixed-methods approach in two stages of qualitative (identifying the behavioral indicators and factors through interviews with experts in the field of tourism and disability) and quantitative (designing a questionnaire based on the indicators obtained from the qualitative stage and distributing them among tourists with disabilities in Tehran). The first stage was conducted using the content analysis method and Maxqda2018 software. The partial least squares method and SmartPLS3 software were used at the second stage. The results of the study indicated that the two main categories of behavioral factors, i.e., "Personal factors" (personal characteristics of people with disabilities and their perception of interaction with the environment) and "interpersonal factors" (public responsibility towards people with disability, community education, the dependency of people with disability on another person's assistant along with the development of positive feelings in these people) affected the development of accessible tourism for people with physical disabilities.