Cultural distance and international tourists’ intention to visit a destination

ABSTRACT

Drawing on literature about travel motivation and travel risk, this paper examines how cultural distance influences international tourist’s intention to visit a destination country. Structural equation modeling is utilized to analyze the responses from 729 potential tourists in China. The data supports a model suggesting that cultural distance has bidirectional effects on tourists’ intention to visit a destination country through exerting influences on tourists’ novelty perception and risk perception of this country. Finally, it is suggested to make reasonable use of cultural distance in destination marketing practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural distance
• novelty perception
• travel risk
• intention to visit
• international tourists
• China
• outbound tourism
• destination choice
• structural equation model
• bidirectional effect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.