PROCESS OF THE TOURIST DESTINATION IMAGE ELEMENTS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY BASED ON GROUNDED THEORY

doi:10.13959/j.issn.1003-2398.2018.06.019

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HUMAN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2018, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (6) : 152-160. DOI: 10.13959/j.issn.1003-2398.2018.06.019

PROCESS OF THE TOURIST DESTINATION IMAGE ELEMENTS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY BASED ON GROUNDED THEORY

WANG Jun-yi, WU Jin-feng, WANG A-min

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Abstract

Tourism destination image has an important impact on the choice behavior of tourist, whose connotation and formation mechanism are the focus and difficult issues in the international research of tourism destination image. On the basis of understanding the tourism destination image as a whole system, Image elementsare the basic unit of tourism destination image system, Image elements are the result of tourists' cognition of various attributes and activities of tourism destinations.This research serves online travel text as data source, takes the use of grounded theory to explore the cognitive process of the tourist destination image elements. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were adoptedin this research. Following three steps of the grounded theory:open coding, axial coding, and selective coding, the cognitive process model of the tourist destinationimage elements has been established. Chi-square test methods are used to study the dimension differences of the cognitive process of the tourism destination image elements. The results show that the cognitive process of the tourism destination image elements includes three processes:information acquisition, cognitive processing and factor changing. These three processes are interrelated. The process of information acquisition is the basic part of the cognitive process of the image element of tourism destination, including "multi-sensory experience", "interpersonal interaction" and "information search" three approaches. Cognitive processing is the core link of the cognitive process of image elements, consisting of "clustering" and "contrast" two approaches.

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tourism destination image / cognitive image elements / cognitive process / grounded theory

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WANG Jun-yi, WU Jin-feng, WANG A-min. PROCESS OF THE TOURIST DESTINATION IMAGE ELEMENTS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY BASED ON GROUNDED THEORY[J]. HUMAN GEOGRAPHY. 2018, 33(6): 152-160 https://doi.org/10.13959/j.issn.1003-2398.2018.06.019

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