Extending Culturability Evaluation Model To Tourism Websites Targeted At British And Chinese Young Generation

Intercultural study on website is a brand new field. So far, the researchers involved are mostly from computer science. They try to develop or evaluate the usability of websites in different cultural contexts. However, owing to lack in systematic training in the discipline of intercultural communications, their research concentrates on the technical level. In recent years, scholars from the intercultural communication discipline begin to enter this field, and coined the term"culturability".In the past two years of her graduate study, the author has been doing projects of culturability evaluation on websites in varied industries. These cherished experiences helped her develop a probationary culturability evaluation model of websites. Based on the summary of the past research findings about website cultural differences and usability, this thesis explores the field of website culturability evaluation. The author applies this model to websites designed specifically for the Chinese youth. Before the test, the author first sets several key parameters, from the Sino-British cultural differences comparative study of the 100 best tourist websites in 2007, the author arranges the findings in arrays of data for the reference. Then, she uses the model to evaluate selected websites by analyzing the same parameters, and forms a preliminary report about the culturability of the website.In the first chapter of her thesis, the author elaborates the background and academic significance of this research. In the second chapter, she briefly reviews the history of intercultural communications and the intercultural study in website culturability; she then expounds in the third chapter several representative cultural models, and chooses the dimensions that directly exert influence on her model to explain in detail. In the fourth chapter, the author proposes her website culturability evaluation model, and gives full explanation on each of the modules. She then designs a test process in which she adopts the methodology of quantitative content analysis to examine controlled variables of the top 50 Chinese and British website. Based on the comparison of the statistics and expected results, the authors tests the feasibility of her model. In the last part of the paper, the author summarizes her model, the results of the test and creativity of her research, and also she raises several limitations of this thesis, and looks forward to future studies on this brand new field.