Visitors’ spatio-temporal behavior at a zoo in China

ABSTRACT

Information on tourists’ spatio-temporal behavior is useful for destination marketing and management. GPS data collection, GIS and statistical analyses of survey data from a zoo in Beijing are reported. Results indicate that seven behavior patterns exist that are distinct according to demography and visit attributes. Tourist behavior is influenced by animal features (e.g. the number of animals, endangerment category, feeding habits and aggressiveness), the environment (exhibition openness and hygiene), and service facility attributes (e.g. retail facilities, toilets, recreational facilities and catering services). The findings provide insight into the behavioral characteristics of Chinese zoo visitors and factors that influence them. The results can be used to enhance environmental and exhibition design, visitor flow forecasts and tourists flow distribution.

KEYWORDS:

• Wildlife tourism
• tourists’ spatio-temporal behavior
• GPS
• captive wildlife
• tourism marketing
• Asia pacific
• tourists’ flow
• tourism attraction
• zoo
• China

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Education of People’s Republic of China [grant number 18YJC760146]; the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 41601129]; and the Central University [grant number 2015ZCQ-YL-04].