Effects of vicarious and direct experience on tourists' cognitive knowledge, affective reactions and behavioral outcomes regarding the destination: a schema-based intra-cultural comparison of chinese and Macau outbound tourists in europe

Abstract

Extant literature in tourism tends to consider destination attributes such as destination services, facilities and experiences as the decisive factors when studying tourist behaviors, adopting a behaviorist approach. Such bottom-up perspective ignores the significance of top-down perspective as indicated by cognitive psychology, that tourists' generating regions (home environment, particularly the physical settings) could possibly determine how tourists experience the destination. Therefore, this thesis focuses on examining this gap, while comparing with the tradition bottom-up perspective. Macau and mainland Chinese outbound tourists travelling to Europe provide an adequate context for this study, since they belong to the same cultural group yet live in distinct physical settings. As related studies are scant, the empirical research of this thesis adopts mixed-methods. In the first phase, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 56 individuals, followed by a between-subjects experimental design with 414 participants. The interviews set the direction and inspired the selection of key psychological propensities to be examined for the subsequent experiment. Hypotheses were defined with 2 main manipulations: the length of residence in Macau (Macau natives/less than five years/zero residential experience) and having or not travel experience in European destinations, particularly Portugal (never travelled to Europe/travelled to European destinations other than Portugal/travelled to Portugal besides other European destinations). The interviews found out that there is much overlap in both groups' place meanings regarding European destinations as they are culturally Chinese. Nonetheless, the Portuguese symbolic settings of their home environment are profoundly integrated in the Macau interviewees' autobiographical memories and self-identity, which turns them into "vicarious insiders" of Portugal prior to their actual visits, thus rendering Portugal a specifically meaningful destination. Analysis results of the experiments demonstrated that direct travel experience indeed exerts a larger impact on almost all key tourist psychological proclivities. However, the living experience in Macau as a vicarious experience in European destinations cannot be ignored, regardless of the participants' travel experience in Europe. Mainland Chinese participants with some years of residential experience in Macau significantly differentiate from their compatriots who have zero residential experience in Macau in diverse psychological proclivities, depending on the gender. By bridging environmental psychology to the context of tourism, this thesis contributes to (1) the understanding of the process of place attachment development and the place identity and place meaning literature; (2) how cognitive psychology, particularly the notion of schemata can be used to inform a more nuanced understanding of tourists and substantiate the studies of intra-cultural variation; (3) the literature with respect to Chinese outbound tourists in Europe; and (4) an improved measure of consumers' objective knowledge.