Scale development and validation of anime tourism motivations

ABSTRACT

Anime tourism has emerged as an important form of tourism resulted from both online and offline human activities and interactions. However, investigations into anime tourism motivations remain limited. Using Chinese anime tourists as study subjects and employing a mixed methods approach, this study develops a five-dimension anime tourism motivation scale with sufficient reliability and validity. The five motivational factors are anime authenticity seeking, novelty, escape/relaxation, socialisation, and anime cultural exploration. The results help understand unique anime tourist behaviours, expand the current knowledge of media-induced tourism, and extend contemporary cultural consumption literature. Based on the results, theoretical and managerial implications were discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Anime tourism
• motivation
• popular cultural tourism
• contemporary cultural consumption
• media-induced tourism
• scale development

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Sichuan Province Science and Technology Plan Project (Department of Science and Technology of Sichuan Province) (to LI Zhiyong) [grant number 2019YFS0078]; and Sichuan university (2019hhs-13).