Chinese tourists’ motivations of visiting a highly volatile destination: a means-end approach

ABSTRACT

This study examines Chinese outbound tourists’ motivations of visiting Israel, as a highly volatile destination. Employing means-end theory and its associated laddering technique, the study identified 6 means-end patterns (including 14 dominant means-end chains) to illustrate tourists’ motivations at three levels of attributes, consequences, and values. Prominent destination attributes that motivated Chinese tourists to visit Israel include the local people (Jews), local culture, history, well-known places, religions, and geographical location, which converge on three end values of life enrichment, self-esteem and achievement. The study contributes to the motivation literature by clarifying Chinese tourist motivations of visiting a highly volatile destination in a means-end value chain structure. Destination marketing implications are provided based on the findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Travel motivation
• Chinese tourists
• highly volatile destination
• Israel
• means-end theory
• hierarchical value map (HVM)

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank Associate Professor Tim Lockyer from the University of Waikato and Associate Professor Tianyu Ying from Zhejiang University for their support and coordination during the data coding of this research. The first author also personally thanks his good friend Amanda Liu for her kind help during the process of data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jun Wen is a lecturer in tourism and services marketing in the School of Business and Law at Edith Cowan University, Australia. His current research interests lie in Chinese outbound tourism marketing, behaviours, and other related aspects.

Songshan (Sam) Huang, PhD, is a research professor in tourism and services marketing in the School of Business and Law at Edith Cowan University, Australia. His research interests include tourist behaviour, destination marketing, tour guiding, and various Chinese tourism and hospitality issues.