Chinese international students’ psychological adaptation process in Korea: the role of tourism experience in the host country

ABSTRACT

This study aims to shed light on the effect of international students’ lifelong learning and dining experience during the trip in a host country on their psychological adaptation, place attachment, and sharing of tourism experience. Employing responses from 247 Chinese students in South Korea, a SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) technique was used for the analysis. The study found that lifelong learning positively influences dining-out flow experience, which in turn placed positive effects on psychological adaptation, place attachment, and sharing of tourism experience, whereas place attachment mediates the relationship between flow experience and both sharing of tourism experience and psychological adaptation.

KEYWORDS:

• Acculturation
• Asia Pacific
• flow experience
• food consumption
• international students
• lifelong learning
• place attachment
• psychological adaptation
• tourism experience sharing
• transformative learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.