An exploratory study on Chinese tourists’ visitation to a U.S. National Park

ABSTRACT

This study adopts semi-structured interviews in Grand Teton National Park (GRTE) in the United States and aims to understand Chinese tourists’ decision-making processes and experiences. The results reveal that geographic distances, China's unique technical infrastructure and policies influence Chinese tourists’ information sources and reasons for visiting GRTE. Their information sources are unique, and their decisions for visiting GRTE are ad-hoc in nature. Chinese tourists’ expectations and experiences, such as planned places to visit and activities to participate in, are influenced by a cultural dimension of a high level of collectivism. The study also shows that Chinese tourists’ sense of complacency, respect for nature, comfort with detachment from nature, and beliefs in fate and destiny affect their satisfaction with their experiences, compared to domestic American tourists. The study then provides a conceptual model of how these national differences affect Chinese tourists’ information source choices, decision-making, expectations, satisfaction, and intentions to return in the future. The model may overthrow the classic linear process of consumer decision making framework in a cross-country context.

KEYWORDS:

• National park
• Chinese tourist
• semi-structured interviews
• decision-making process
• cultural influences

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Chinese Government Scholarship and 2018 UW-NPS Small Grant (with Grant #1003666).

Notes on contributors

Rui Li

Rui Li has a M.S. in Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research interest includes cross-cultural tourism, especially cross-cultural tourism in a national park context.

Yu-xia Lin

Yu-Xia Lin is a Lecturer at the School of Tourism and Urban-Rural Planning, Zhejiang Gongshang University, China. Her areas of research are econometrics and tourism economics.

Zachary D. Miller

Zachary D. Miller is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Society and Conservation at Utah State University. He is also faculty affiliate of the Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, the Ecology Center, the Western Night Skies Council, and the Gateway and Natural Amenity Region Initiative. His research helps managers use science-based frameworks for learning about and make decisions regarding visitor use in parks and protected areas.

Chengcheng Su

Chengcheng Su is a Ph.D candidate in Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management, School of Management, Zhejiang University. Her research interests are in the areas of tourist behavior, smart tourism and social media marketing.

Bing Pan

Bing Pan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management at the Pennsylvania State University. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Computational Data Sciences and the Graduate Program in Social Data Analytics. His research interests focus on data analytics and big data in tourism and parks, destination marketing, and the benefits of travel.

B. Derrick Taff

B. Derrick Taff is an Assistant Professor in the Recreation, Park and Tourism Management Department at Penn State University. His research examines how communication strategies influence human behavior and, in particular, how they promote healthy human behaviors, and ultimately strong ecological values.

Alan Graefe

Alan Graefe is a Professor of Recreation, Park and Tourism Management and Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment at the Pennsylvania State University. His principal research interests revolve around the application of social science to various aspects of recreation resources planning and management. He is also experienced with studies of environmental impacts of outdoor recreation and the integration of biological and visitor use data to address visitor capacity problems.