The Impact Of Confucius Institutes’ Cultural Communication On Inbound Tourist Flow To China

With China ranking the second-largest economy and the fast development of Confucius Institutes,China has cooperated more intensively with the world in the fields of economy and culture,therefore inbound tourist flow to China enjoys sustainable growth.A report released in 2019 by the World Tourism Organization shows that China has become the fourth largest tourists’ destination in the world.Destination’s national image becomes a crucial element influencing tourists’ destination decisions.So travelers from different cultural backgrounds will have a diversified evaluation of the image due to the amount of destination information,accessibility of message channels,and their embedded cultural system.So it is necessary to scrutiny the economic role played by cultural communication in the fields of international tourist flow.Previous studies on cultural communication and international tourist flow have either taken a factor analysis or econometrics method,while ignoring microeconomic theoretical basis and the mechanism analysis of this cultural communication process.Additionally,only emphasizing on the attraction or the cost effect of cultural difference will easily lead to the conclusion of the "cultural distance paradox".Therefore,the research questions of this dissertation are:(1)as the cultural communication platform of China,how do Confucius Institutes influence inbound tourists’ demand to China in general?(2)What are the channels and mechanisms through which Confucius Institutes influence the tourist flow in China?(3)Does cultural distance heterogeneity influence the impact of cultural communication,put another way,does cultural distance have a heterogeneous influence on the effect of cultural communication?This study summarizes the cultural communication functions of the Confucius Institutes and then proposes the path through which Confucius Institutes affect tourist flows.Confucius Institutes are believed to be a successful platform for cultural communication,which combine cross-cultural communication at various levels:individual level,institutional level,and national level.And the message sent by Confucius Institutes provides a flexible up-to-date comprehensive destination image,and the special operation mode enables it to make good use of the social capital to construct information delivering channels and networks.As the culture name card of China and an important platform of cultural communication,Confucius Institutes exert great influence in facilitating the high-level exchange of visits,smoothing China’s relation with host countires,expanding the scope of Chinese culture,meeting the world’s demand for Chinese language learning,and providing comprehensive information of China.Based on “Push and Pull” tourists demand theory,cultural communication theory and cost theory,this study proposes that the possible mechanism are:(1)the cultural communication activities of Confucius Institutes deliver timely,real,and comprehensive destination information.All these provide potential tourists with more destination information and broaden their accessibility of information channels as well,which helps to establish a good image of the destination country.(2)The brand-building of Confucius Institutes helps to promote cultural integration and influence potential travelers’ acceptance of cultural value.(3)Through public diplomacy,commercial cooperations Confucius Institutes have implemented cultural information overflow through both direct and indirect manners,which lowers information searching cost.Based on these assumptions,this paper employs a consumer utility-based gravity model with moderation and mediation effects to predict the possible influence of cultural communication on inbound tourist flow to China.Empirical results by employing panel data from 2001 to 2018 from 33 countries prove that:(1)Confucius Institutes have a positive influence on tourists’ demand to China,after controlling the economic sizes,geographic distance,population size,and etc.(2)Confucius Institutes contribute the inbound tourist flow to China by enhancing cultural preference,so a mediation effect of cultural preference is proved.(3)Confucius Institutes have a moderation effect by reducing barriers of institutional distance.(4)Confucius Institutes increase the attraction of cultural difference,but the cost effect of cultural distance is not significant in our sample.(5)There is an inverse U shape relation between cultural distance and inbound tourist flow to China,and the regression results by groups indicate that after the establishment of Confucius Institutes,the inflection point shifts to the right.According to the above empirical and theoretical analysis,the conclusions are listed as follows:(1)the cultural activities and cultural brand promoted by Confucius Institutes help to deliver cultural messages,construct social networks,communication channels,which offers a positive destination image of China,therefore they contribute to the inbound tourism demand to China in general.(2)Confucius Institutes organize different types of communities such as language learning communities,cultural activity communities,business communities,oversea students’ communities,and increase cultural acceptance and mutual trust among its members.Therefore Confucius Institutes contribute to inbound tourism demand through cultural preference.(3)Linguistic distance and institutional distance serve as intangible barriers to inbound tourism demand,while Confucius Institutes reduce the information asymmetry and intangible travel cost by offering comprehensive information about the destination.(4)Cultural distance proved to have a dual influence on inbound tourism demand,but the existence of Confucius Institutes enhances the atrractiveness of cultural difference,which indicates the attraction range of cultural distance expands.The innovation points of this paper are listed as follows:(1)this paper enrichs the analytical framework of Confucius Institutes’ ecomonic effect on international tourists’ demand by employing "push-pull" theory,the information transfer theory and the travel cost theory.Besides,this paper takes consumer utility function to modify the gravity model.(2)By classifying the functions of Confucius Institutes,this paper concludes mechanisms of Confucius Institutes influence the demand of inbound tourists to China.(3)An inverse U shape effect of cultural distance is found,which explains the heterogenous effect of cultural envoriment on cultural communicaiton.The results of this study provide theoretical and empirical evidence for both cultural communication and China tourism campaign.