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| A STUDY ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOURISM DESTINATION IMAGE, TOURIST SATISFACTION AND BEHAVIORAL INTENTIONS——A Case Study of Guilin Seven Star Park |
| LU Shao-jing, ZHANG Jie, ZHANG Hong-lei, ZHANG Jin-he, KE Li |
| Department of Land Resources and Tourism Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China |
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Abstract This paper examines the cognitive components of the destination image and their influence on affective image tourists' satisfaction and behavioral intentions and provides a case study of the Seven Star Park in Guilin. Structural questionnaires are employed in the data collection process, and a 19-item scale for measuring the perceptional cognitive image and a 3-item scale for one-dimensional affective image. 480 effective questionnaires are finally used for the following analysis. Firstly, the results of exploratory factor analysis of 19-item cognitive image scale confirm the functional-mixed-psychological continuum in the cognitive image of a destination put forward and modified by some international researchers. The four factors finally obtained as the perspective of resource and environmental, which are that (1) tourists' perception of tourism facility and service is posited as the functional component; (2) tourists' perception of natural resources; (3) historical/cultural environment as mixed component; (4) that of place environment of the destination as a psychological component. Secondly, using structural equation model, this paper analyses the influence of each components of cognitive image on the affective image and the influence of all the components of the tourism destination image on tourists' satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Six hypothesis of the conceptual model put forward on this paper are partially supported by the results, which show that, for the Seven Star Park in Guilin, tourists' perception of the place environment as a psychological component of cognitive image of destination influence significantly on tourists' emotions as the affective image; and the other three factors has a statistical significant influence on tourist satisfaction.
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Received: 02 November 2010
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2011, Vol. 26 
