Resumen de Merchants’ Perception Towards Tourism Development Under COVID-19 Pandemic in Iran: Investigating the Impact of Social Hospitality and Hospitable Behaviour

Sedigheh Moghavvemi, Ali Hassani

• This study expanded the Social Exchange Theory (SET) to elucidate factors motivating merchants in tourist destinations to operate their business despite the high risk of exposure to COVID-19. SET allows for a more comprehensive understanding of economic theory, especially when investigating human attitudes and behaviors during crises, and this study intends to measure the costs and benefits of serving tourists during the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of merchants’ hospitable behavior, and the perception of personal benefits towards attitude and support tourism development. Questionnaires were collected from 670 merchants from five tourist hotspots in five major Iranian cities and later analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling (Amos).