Invisible Cities
Determinants of attractiveness
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- 3.3 Impacts of media publication on tourism demand
3.2 Determinants of attractivenessAlthough there are negative incidents happening, tourism industry is still keeping growing, because tourism demand also depends on many other factors. In Section 2.2, the evolution of tourism in China was discussed; it gives us some cues about how China has made itself become a more attractive destination. As a decisive factor that influences tourism demand, destination attractiveness needs to be carefully evaluated. Therefore, this section will conceptualize destination attractiveness by present an overview of its determinants used in various precedent studies, in order to pick up appropriate factors for the case studies in Section 3.5, and some of them will also be selected as variables to construct quantitative model in Chapter 4. In general, travel decision is a result that two groups of factors contribute together, physical attributes and perceived image (Kim & Perdue, 2011). Physical attributes are the tangible tourism products a place is able to offer, which will compose cognitive image, while tourists’ opinions of their experience and s how their demand is satisfied consists affective image (Hu & Ritchie, 1993). There is a long tradition of destination attractiveness study, and a lot of them summarized a list of determinants of destination attractiveness (Gearing, Swart, & Var, 1974) (Hu & Ritchie, 1993) (Crouch & Ritchie, 1999). Table 1 summarized the factors they have been using for measurement, some of them overlapped quite frequently, they are culture & history, landscape, special events & activities, services, and safety & security (Lee, Ou, & Huang, 2009). Table 1: Determinants of destination attractiveness
Source: own elaboration Since this research is relevant to Chinese cities, some unique attributes of urban areas have to be added in. For example, the landscape also covers interesting architecture and famous landmarks; special activities include nightlife, music, performances and museums (Jansen-Verbeke, 1986). Furthermore, since Chinese economy has been experiencing rapid expansion, and business visitor share a large proportion of inbound tourists, it is reasonable to pay extra attention to the factors related to business. The measurement for an attractive destination for this group of tourists has been briefly summarized by Enright and Newton (2004), namely inputs, industrial & consumer demand, inter-firm competition & cooperation, industrial & regional clustering, internal organization & strategy of firms, and institutions, social structure and agendas. Combining above-mentioned factors together and taking into account of the analysis of Section 2.2, in the following cases studies, an attractiveness of a destination will be evaluated from the aspects shown in Table 2. Note that another determinant “security and safety” is not shown in the table, because it is a criterion of case selection, only the destinations with negative security and safety issue will be analyzed. Table 2: Determinants of destination attractiveness
Source: own elaboration 3.3 Impacts of media publication on tourism demandMedia publicity is a variable playing a role on destination image formation (Beerli & Martin, 2004). It usually has an impact on secondary image, which is perception of a destination before visiting it, while the primary image is formulate during the actual trip, but secondary image is agreed that to be sufficient to choose a destination (Phelps, 1986; Mansfeld, 1992). Information provided by induced, autonomous and organic agents, including broadcasting news, documentaries, film, TV programs, acquired in the daily life, will be sources of learning the knowledge of destinations and finally will influence travel decisions. In this case, media publicity of air pollution will enable tourists living in the foreign countries get better known the air pollution problem in the Chinese cities, which make it to be an important indication in the estimation model. Positive publicity generated from destinations’ peace and safety guides a growth of tourism demand, while negative publicity no matter what factors ascribed, usually lead to a decline of tourism demand (Sonmez & Graefe, 1998). It is understandable, because tourists are looking forward to enjoyable experience during their trips, so naturally they prone to places with more positive media publicity. The above discussion demonstrated that there is a direct impact of media publicity on destination image. However, it can also be a moderating variable in the chain reaction. The main reason is that media publicity might bring unstable effect due to the exaggeration. It is common sense that the actual situation or intensity is easy to be exaggerated in the media, which results in an enlarged effect. Air pollution in Chinese cities is frequently reported by media with a picture that buildings hidden behind heavy smog. It is a kind of exaggeration because this photo might be taken in a certain day under an extreme weather in certain place, but not an everyday situation. It is not necessarily to be an intended reporting, however, it will automatically deliver suggestions that Chinese cities look like what they have seen in the picture now. Air quality is a part of natural environment of destination, regarding environment in general, a negative exaggeration in will lead to a larger decline in numbers of tourists (Mihalic, 2000). Therefore, the impact of media publicity on tourism demand is ubiquitous, and probably has different extents brought by exaggeration. The exact impact of media publication needs to be examined. Directory: pub pub -> Project Scoring Template Pre-Construction Phase New Core/Branch Campus Projects pub -> Acm word Template for sig site pub -> The german unification, 1815-1870 pub -> Baltic Olympiads in Informatics: Challenges for Training Together pub -> Preparation of Papers for ieee transactions on medical imaging pub -> Forthcoming meetings and conferences pub -> Asilomar Conference on Circuits, Systems & Computers, Pacific Grove, ca, November 1978, pp. 55 58 pub -> Forthcoming meetings and conferences pub -> Harmonised compatibility and sharing conditions for video pmse in the 7 9 ghz frequency band, taking into account radar use Download 352.16 Kb. Share with your friends:
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