A comparison of Chinese and Czech oversea urban tourism

• Název práce v češtině: Srovnání čínského a českého městského turismu
• Název v anglickém jazyce: A comparison of Chinese and Czech oversea urban tourism
• Klíčová slova: Česká republika, Čína, městský turismus, přeshraniční, turistické chování
• Klíčová slova anglicky: Tourism behaviour, Urban Tourism, Cross-border, China, Czech Republic,
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2020/2021
• Typ práce: diplomová práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Katedra sociologie (23-KS)
• Vedoucí / školitel: doc. Alessandro Testa, Ph.D.
• Řešitel: Mgr. Yajing Wang - zadáno vedoucím/školitelem
• Datum přihlášení: 13.09.2021
• Datum zadání: 13.09.2021
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 15.09.2022 15:00
• Místo konání obhajoby: Pekařská 16, JPEK209, 209, Malá učebna, 2.patro
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 29.07.2022
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 15.09.2022
• Oponenti: doc. PhDr. Denisa Hejlová, Ph.D.

Zásady pro vypracování

Topic of work

Cultural values shape people's needs and behaviors, and tourists with different cultural values will show great differences in decision-making, consumption, and evaluation behavior. Some researchers believe that the effect on behavior among people of different ages is generally consistent, even when its effect on tourism behavior exceeds that of demographic variables (Hsu, Woodside and Marshall, 2013). In today's increasingly cross-border tourism, cross-cultural exchanges are almost ubiquitous. Knowing the cultural values behind behaviors can help tourists to better enjoy the local culture but is also important for destination tourism marketing. The degree of cross-cultural communication is determined by the similarities and differences of the cultural background of tourists and hosts (Samovar, 2015).

In the existing studies, the focus has been on the travel behaviors of tourists from different cultural backgrounds at various stages of their journey. Numerous studies have confirmed that cultural values are one of the most important influencing factors in the information search and decision-making process (Schmidt and Spreng, 1996). Comparing the sources of decision-making information for Japanese and German tourists, Mihalik et al. found that information for Japanese tourists came mainly from travel agencies, travel brochures and books (Mihalik, Uysal and Pan, 1994). Japanese tourists exhibit a high degree of uncertainty avoidance, usually using formal information-gathering channels (travel agencies) (Money and Crotts, 2003). In countries where direct verbal communication is customary, such as most Western countries, Individualistic tourists are likely to pay more attention to clear communication, are more willing to accept risk, and are also more dependent on external information search. In countries where communication is often implicit, such as most Asian countries, Individualistic tourists tend to participate in group tours and obtain information more often from friends and relatives. (Chen, 2000).
Tourists from western countries are more likely to travel alone and visit more destinations, with higher frequency of travel and longer travel trips (Crotts, 2004). These show there are differences between East and West tourists in terms of destination visits and number of days spent abroad. Japanese tourists prefer short-term holiday travel due to uncertainty in values, while European tourists prefer long-term travel (Ritter, 1987).

With the increase in the number of outbound tourists from China, Wong and others used Chinese cultural values to analyze the outbound tourism behavior of Hong Kong tourists. They take factors such as social harmony, Confucian work motivation, personal happiness and moral principles out from the structure of cultural values, and then used typical relevant analysis to confirm that Hong Kong people like to participate in self-funded activities, taste local cuisine and take photos (Wong and Lau, 2001).

The research mentioned above in mainly quantitative research, which first uses factor analysis to put forward the structure of cultural values, after that quantitative research methods are used to test the relationship between cultural values and tourism behavior.

The present study will be conducted in the Czech Republic, located in the heart of Europe, and China, located in the easternmost part of the
Eurasian continent. The two countries have very different religious and cultural backgrounds, and tourists from these two countries may have different behaviors and motivations in the course of cross-border tourism in the face of cross-cultural communication .

The number of Chinese overseas travelers has increased in recent years (McKenna, Cai and Tuunanen, 2017), and Prague, Czech Republic is one of the popular destinations preferred by Chinese tourists. There are few studies about Czech tourism. In addition, I am from China, I know Chinese culture and language, and now I am living and studying in Czech, which would facilitates research studies. These are some of the reasons why it is my intention to focus on these two countries.

This research will try to find out the reasons and significance behind the different behaviors of cross-border tourists in both countries by focusing primarily on communication pattens. Therefore, it will be a valuable contribution in fields such as tourism industry marketing, service policies, travel research, and the sociology and anthropology of tourism.


Assumed research methods

This study will mainly be qualitative research (Fetterman, 2010), in the form of interviews. It will less participate about quantitative methods.
The target group will be young people aged 25to39 from the Czech Republic and China. The initial goal is to select 10 people for each country. Respondents would be first selected from friends who are eligible. I will use the "snowball" approach to select more respondents. The screening process also requires balancing the gender and occupation of respondents in both countries. Considering that these interviews with Czechs need to be conducted in English, there is a limit to the educational level of the interviewees, who must have completed should hold at least ahave secondary degree. Interviewees with college or higher educational experience would be ideal.

The study will focus on urban tourism for overseas travelers and is concerned with the tourism behavior when confronted with an “exotic” city It will focus on in past processes, trends, and transformations affecting tourists in the two countries in the past ten years. Combined with the five stages of consumer behavior and decision-making process (Kotler, 2013), tourism behavior can be classified into three categories: pre-tourism behavior, mid-tourism behavior and post-tourism behavior (Woodside, MacDonald and Burford, 2004). Among them, pre-tourism behavior roughly includes tourism motivation, tourism information search ((Eleni) Michopoulou and Moisa, 2016), tourist destination selection, etc. Mid-tourism behavior roughly includes the duration of tourism, preferences for tourism facilities, tourism participation, food, accommodation preferences, consumption and attitude habits, etc. Post-travel behavior roughly includes after-the-fact evaluation, whether to share with others and the main ways to share (Manrai and Manrai, 2011).

According to the relevant research of previous scholars, as well as the fresh observation, initially, some hypotheses are broadly proposed and it is hoped that the following hypotheses can be tested through research and knowledge can be gained to explain these behaviors.

Some of the hypotheses to be tested:

Access to information: Czechs prefer to get information through books, travel agencies, and Chinese prefer to get information through travel strategies shared by friends and celebrities.

Travel duration and destination: Czechs are willing to spend more time at the same destination. Chinese prefer to go to more different destinations at the same time.

Choice of tours: The Czechs prefer to experience some interactive tours, but the Chinese prefer to watch browsing tours.

Food and accommodation options: for Czechs do not see food as an important part of their tourism and they are more willing to choose Airbnb as accommodation. For Chinese, food is an important part of tourism, generally prefer hotels.

Consumption and sharing in travel: Chinese prefer to take photos during travel than Czechs and are more willing to share them through social networks. At the same time Chinese prefer to shop on tours.

These might sound as generalizations, or even stereotypes, however, one of the aims of this research will be to assess and, prove or disprove them.

Ethical context of the considered project

All respondents' personal information will be anonymous.

Seznam odborné literatury

Indicative list of literature

1. Alessandro Testa, "“Events that Want to Become Heritage: on the Vernacularisation of ICH and the Politics of Culture and Identity in European Public Rituals”. In C. Clopot, M. Nic Craith, U. Kockel, B. Tjarve (eds.), Heritage and Festivals in Europe (ISBN 9780367186760), Routledge, London-New York 2019, pp. 79-94.
2. Chen, J. (2000) ‘Cross-Cultural Differences in Travel Information Acquisition among Tourists from Three Pacific-Rim Countries’, Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research - J Hospit Tourism Res, 24, pp. 239–251. doi: 10.1177/109634800002400207.
3. Crotts, J. C. (2004) ‘The Effect of Cultural Distance on Overseas Travel Behaviors’, Journal of Travel Research, 43(1), pp. 83–88. doi: 10.1177/0047287504265516.
4. (Eleni) Michopoulou, E. and Moisa, D. (2016) ‘The Role of Culture on Online Search Behaviour: A Comparative Study Between British and Chinese Travellers’, in Inversini, A. and Schegg, R. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 765–777. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-28231-2_55.
5. Fetterman, D. M. (2010) Ethnography : step-by-step. Third edition. SAGE (Applied social research methods series: 17). Available at: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=shib&custid=s1240919&profile=eds.
6. Hsu, S.-Y., Woodside, A. G. and Marshall, R. (2013) ‘Critical Tests of Multiple Theories of Cultures’ Consequences: Comparing the Usefulness of Models by Hofstede, Inglehart and Baker, Schwartz, Steenkamp, as well as GDP and Distance for Explaining Overseas Tourism Behavior’, Journal of Travel Research, 52(6), pp. 679–704. doi: 10.1177/0047287512475218.
7. Kotler, P. (2013) Marketing management. Čtrnácté vydání. Grada. Available at: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=shib&custid=s1240919&profile=eds.
8. Manrai, L. A. and Manrai, A. (2011) Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions and Tourist Behaviors: A Review and Conceptual Framework. SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 1962711. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1962711 (Accessed: 20 June 2021).
9. McKenna, B., Cai, W. and Tuunanen, T. (2017) ‘Consumer Information Services in Intercultural Tourism: An Ethnographic Study of Chinese Outbound Backpackers’, in. Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. doi: 10.24251/HICSS.2017.148.
10. Mihalik, B. J., Uysal, M. and Pan, M.-C. (1994) ‘A Comparison of Information Sources Used by Vacationing Germans and Japanese’, Hospitality Research Journal, 18–19(3–1), pp. 39–46. doi: 10.1177/1096348094018-19003-105.
11. Money, R. B. and Crotts, J. C. (2003) ‘The effect of uncertainty avoidance on information search, planning, and purchases of international travel vacations’, Tourism Management, 24(2), pp. 191–202. doi: 10.1016/S0261-5177(02)00057-2.
12. Ritter, W. (1987) ‘Styles of Tourism in the Modern World’, Tourism Recreation Research, 12(1), pp. 3–8. doi: 10.1080/02508281.1987.11014470.
13. Samovar, L. A. (2015) Intercultural communication : a reader. Fourteenth edition and fortieth anniversary edition. Cengage learning. Available at: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=shib&custid=s1240919&profile=eds.
14. Schmidt, J. B. and Spreng, R. A. (1996) ‘A proposed model of external consumer information search’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 24(3), pp. 246–256. doi: 10.1177/0092070396243005.
15. Wong, S. and Lau, E. (2001) ‘Understanding the Behavior of Hong Kong Chinese Tourists on Group Tour Packages’, Journal of Travel Research, 40(1), pp. 57–67. doi: 10.1177/004728750104000108.
16. Woodside, A. G., MacDonald, R. and Burford, M. (2004) ‘Grounded Theory of Leisure Travel’, Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 17(1), pp. 7–39. doi: 10.1300/J073v17n01_02.