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| AN ANALYSIS OF THE INTERACTION BETWEEN TOURISTS' COGNITIVE DISTANCE AND THEIR SATISFACTION |
| ZHANG Hong-lei1, ZHANG Jie1, SHI Chun-yun2, LIU Ze-hua1 |
1. Department of Land Resource and Tourism Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China;
2. School of Urban Environmental Sciences, Xuzhou Normal University, Xuzhou 221116, China |
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Abstract The term cognitive distance refers to people's beliefs about distances between places in large-scale spaces that are far apart and not visible from each other. The cognitive distance phenomenon suggests that when tourists evaluate the impact of distance on their travel decisions, destinations will be placed in a relatively better or worse situation regarding distance than actually exists. Cognitive distance is an important antecedent of tourism geography because it plays a significant role in destination choice and travel behavior. The purpose of this study was to detect the interaction between tourists' cognitive distance and their satisfaction using a survey data. Researchers found that past experience is important in that tourists learn what features of a holiday are more likely to provide them with satisfactory experiences. The theoretical basis of this study was that distance may be an important factor to tourist's satisfaction and more experienced tourists with higher scores on measures of satisfaction may score marginally lower on measures of cognitive distance. A survey data of Jiuzhaigou was used to examine the interaction between tourists' cognitive distance and their satisfaction. Among all the factors we used, only cognitive distance and travel cost affected tourist's satisfaction at a significant level. The results support that cognitive distance has a positive impact on the tourists' satisfaction; the travel cost of Jiuzhaigou's arrivals also has a positive impact on the satisfaction. In the early stage of tourism activities, the main benefits of tourists are the travel benefits from the origin to the destination. The cognitive distance raised the benefits of tourists, and led to the increase of satisfaction level. Arrivals of Jiuzhaigou National Park had high income level and were more concerned about the quality of travel and tourism product quality. Analysis of variance was used to detect the effect of satisfaction to distance perception in the late stage of tourism activities. The study showed that satisfaction of tourists will significantly affect the cognitive distance estimates, and the cognitive distance decreases as the satisfaction enhancing.
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Received: 24 March 2011
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2011, Vol. 26 
