Identification of Participators' Motivational Factors in Battlefield Tourism (Case Study: Khuzestan Province)

Extended Abstract
Introduction
Tourism is people traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for leisure, business or other purposes for not more than one consecutive year. Tourism is an important and vital source of income for many countries. Its importance was recognized in the Manila Declaration on World Tourism of 1980 as "an activity essential to the life of nations because of its direct effects on the social, cultural, educational, and economic sectors of national societies and on their international relations. Tourism also, has been recognized as a one of the important functional dimensions of geographical space that affected by different factors and motivations. War tourism as one of these kinds of tourism activities, is recreational travel to active war zones for purposes of sightseeing or historical study. This type of tourism that sometimes replace to others terms such as military tourism, disaster tourism and like that, emanate from traveling and visiting the bitter, dark or disastrous event and its happening place. Dark tourism contains widespread range of locations and attractiveness, like war place and slums tourism that visiting them happen to different motivations. In recent decades also, because of war occurrence in south and western south of Iran special Khuzestan province, war tourism significantly developed and play an important role to attracting the tourists from all around of Iran, in addition to other type of tourism. But identifying and awareness of goals and motivations of war tourists, is one of the most important issues for capacity building at tourism development that could result to war tourism extension event in regional level. Therefore, this study had been tried to replying to this key question that what are the most effective motivations on war tourism in war torn area of Iran?
 
Materials and Methods
The purpose of this survey was identifying the broad parameters of motivation exhibited by tourists. These findings provided insights and a basis for the construction of the motivational items that were used in the final survey instrument. This article had been done by descriptive- analyzing methodology and by using of existing document for determining the most important motivation of Iran’s war tourism at different group of tourists and visitors of western south of Iran war zoon special Khuzestan province. Rahian noor Caravans that contain students and other NGOs and socials group had a significant role in war tourism extension and also, development of infrastructure of war tourism in war torn area. According to the data of the Rahian Noor camps in the Zanjan County as initiation point of tourists caravans, in years of 2013 more than 100 thousand people from all over the country in the Rahian Noor convoy traveled to war-torn areas that this capacity is increasing along time. In this regard, based on former research reviewing, 16 incentives measures were categorized at three components of war tourism motivations and designed questionnaire based that indexes was used to collect data. Initiation point of visitors among all province of country was Zanjan province that based on Rahian Noor headquarters institutions’ report in 2014, on average, since the beginning of 2011 until the end of 2013 about 13 thousand tourists visit from war zones in the form of caravans. Finally, 373 tourists from different group of Rahiane noor from Zanjan province had been studied for identifying the effective motivation and indexes on war tourism extension in Iran war area destinations. Also Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to assess the reliability of the test results indicate the reliability of the questionnaire (by a coefficient of 0.89) and validity indices are extracted from the literature and has been confirmed by experts view in the field of tourism. To analyze the data and identify the key motivational factors affecting the extension of war tourism were used of the Kruskal-Wallis tests, T-test and linear regression from different group’s attitudes.
 
Discussion and Results
The earned results show that different groups of tourist have a different motivation factors and goals for visiting of war destinations. Based on the result, all of three political, cultural- social and individual-ideological dimensions, have a significant and meaningful impact on war tourism. On the other hand, among the three studied dimensions political dimension (mean=4.07) is effective motivating factors and individual- ideological (mean= 3.7) and cultural- social dimensions (mean= 3.6) are respectively in next importance position from tourist’s attitude. Also the results show that there are meaningful relation between age and social position of tourists to the motivating factors of war tourism. Eldest tourist’s trends towards individual and ideological motivating factors, such as purification, peace of mind and … are more than younger. Also among youth, motivations had tend to the basis of socio-cultural factors such as education, the transferring and learning the old values, such as peace and a message of support. In the next step, to determine the differences between the various sample groups in the three dimensions of motivation the Kruskal-Wallis statistical test was used. The result show that cultural- social motivation in student, political motivations in university student and Basij groups, and individual- ideological motivations in family and governmental staff With the highest efficiency (rank) were the most effective motivations among south war tourists. In order to assessing the impact of these  three dimensions, gathered data through questionnaires had been analyzed by T statistical test that results show that all of had said motivations are meaningful in war tourism extension. It had been proved by regression statistical examination that memorial of victims and sacrifices are the most important motivating factors from visitor’s attitudes.
 
Conclusions
The gained result of this research confirm result of former research about the dark tourism and shows that different motivation cause to tourist persuasion for visiting the dark tourism destination and also, these motivations result of individual features, job situation, religion, and the other factors. Tourism organizations can also, through their role in promoting and providing physical and informational access to these memorials, directly and indirectly influence visitors’ behavioral, cognitive and affective experiences at these sites, and as such, contribute to the war’s memory. War tourism as a one of the dark tourism subdivisions wrought of various motives, as like as tourists age, gender, education level, job and social category. Then, in order to getting the suitable situation in tourism development, different group of tourists and they motives must be attended by planners and tourism managers in war tourism area.
 
Keywords: Dark Tourism, Battlefield, War, Rahiane Noor, Individual Motivation, Khuzestan.
 
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