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Grand View Garden an Investigation of Tourists’ Motivation and Satisfaction http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/ Research Commons at the University of Waikato Copyright Statement: The digital copy of this thesis is protected by the Copyright Act 1994 (New Zealand). The thesis may be consulted by you, provided you comply with the provisions of the Act and the following conditions of use: Any use you make of these documents or images must be for research or private study purposes only, and you may not make them available to any other person. Authors control the copyright of their thesis. You will recognise the author’s right to be identified as the author of the thesis, and due acknowledgement will be made to the author where appropriate. You will obtain the author’s permission before publishing any material from the thesis. Grand View Garden An investigation of tourists’ motivation and satisfaction By Xiaoyu Zhang A thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Tourism and Hospitality Management at the University of Waikato Hamilton July 2012 2 Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere appreciation to several individuals who have assisted and supported me in completing this study. First, and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Chris Ryan for his guidance and advice throughout the year. He always encourages me and helps me to achieve the goals. This thesis would have not been completed without his support. I truly appreciate all the opportunities that he has given to me. I would like to appreciate all the respondents who participated and provided valuable information for this study. I would like to thank my boyfriend, Yongyu Wang, for his encouragement, support and patience. I also would like to thank my friends, WenzheHua, Mengyin Liang, and Haojie, Li, for your help and support in Beijing. Last but not least, I would like to express my special thanks to my parents, for their love and undivided support. Thank you all! 3 ABSTRACT Tourism has many derivatives that contribute to the totality of tourism, and this thesis focuses on a one of these types: namely, film tourism. Film tourism involves visits to a particular destination celebrated for associations with novels, television series, and films (Busby & Klug, 2001). This thesis examines both tourists’ motivation and satisfaction at a film site, Grand View Garden, Beijing, China, and this garden replicated the location of the famous novel, “The Dream of the Red Mansion”. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the motivations and the level of satisfaction of visitors in Grand View Garden. This study adopts mixed methods to collect data which replicate the previous research methods by Ryan et al. (2008), mainly including questionnaire surveys, open-ended questions, visitation, observation, photography, documents, and knowledge of the “Red” novel. All the data was collected at Grand View Garden during November 2011 to March 2012. The software SPSS was used to analysis the statistical data from questionnaires; while the textual data of open-ended questions were analysed by CATPAC software. From a theoretical perceptive, this thesis contributes to the body of literature on tourists’ motivation and satisfaction in film tourism. It shows that the film or novel is an important part of tourists’ motivation, but not the sole motivation. The results of this study found that the most important motivator was the garden’s unique style, which includes the classical architecture and the mixed style of the “Red” storytelling and Chinese historical culture. Certainly, the majority of tourists were motivated by “The Dream of the Red Mansion”, as well as expecting to seeking the scenes described in the “Red” novel or featured on the television series. Further, this study also found tourists both had satisfactory and unsatisfactory perceptions about visiting the garden. The results of this thesis found many respondents expressed satisfaction with the garden’s classical architecture and beautiful scenery, and were satisfied with the garden’s unique style. However, some negative attitudes were also identified, due to, for example, the location not matching descriptions in the novel or the scenes that featured on the TV series. Moreover, tourists also had some negative perceptions with the garden relating to perceived poor maintenance, the presence of too many commercial shops, and expensively priced entry tickets. On a more general note, this study also found most tourists had positive attitudes about using a film site as a tourist attraction. 4 From a practical standpoint, this study provides information for the tourism administration about tourists’ travel motivations and expectations, and both tourists’ satisfactory and unsatisfactory experiences. The related authorities may use this information to better understand tourists, know the visitor’s needs and wants, and find effective ways to satisfy and fulfil tourists’ expectations. 5 Table of Contents ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................ 4 List of Tables ........................................................................................................................................ 12 List of Figures ....................................................................................................................................... 14 Chapter 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 16 1.1Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 16 1.2 Background of the research ..................................................................................................... 16 1.3 Significance of the research .................................................................................................... 17 1.4 Structure of thesis ................................................................................................................... 19 1.5 Chapter summary .................................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 2: Literature Review .......................................................................................................... 22 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 22 2.2 Popular media and tourism ..................................................................................................... 22 2.3 Film Tourism .......................................................................................................................... 24 2.31 Film-induced tourism .................................................................................................... 24 2.32 Literary tourism ............................................................................................................ 25 2.33 Cultural and heritage tourism ........................................................................................ 27 2.4The influence of film................................................................................................................ 29 2.5 Film Tourism Impacts ............................................................................................................. 31 2.6 Tourists’ motivations .............................................................................................................. 33 2.61 Definitions ..................................................................................................................... 33 2.62 Push and pull factors ..................................................................................................... 35 2. 63Tourists’ motivations in film tourism ........................................................................... 35 2.64The film-induced tourists ............................................................................................... 36 2.65 Push and pull factors in film-induced tourism .............................................................. 36 2.7 Tourist Satisfaction ................................................................................................................. 39 2.71 Measuring Tourist Satisfaction ..................................................................................... 40 6 2.72 Expectation-Disconfirmation Model ............................................................................. 40 2.73 Equity Theory ............................................................................................................... 41 2.74 Norm Theory ................................................................................................................. 41 2.75 Perceived Performance Theory ..................................................................................... 42 2.76 Importance-performance Analysis ................................................................................ 42 2.8 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................................... 43 Chapter 3 Context of Research ............................................................................................................. 44 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................
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