An Image Study Of Xi'an Tourism Destination Based On The Sketches Of Inbound Tourists

The destination image is a scientific issue on a highly concerned field of tourism research which has a significant value in tourist destination choice behavior and the revisit-rate increase.The city of Xi’an,an important tourism destination city of our country,has long historical and profound cultural tourism resources,which attracts numerous inbound tourists.How to enhance the tourism destination image of Xi’an from inbound tourists,is a highly theoretical and practical significance of research subject.By the academic aspect,what is tourism destination image of Xi’an in mind of inbound tourists?What factors influence this image?So far,there is no further research.For this reason,this article attempts to discuss the problem of tourism destination image in Xi’an from the perspective of foreign tourists cognitive.Theoretically,it’s conductive to deepen the tourism destination image problem;practically,it makes for both tourism development and tourism destination marketing,meanwhile provides the reference for both tourism product development and tourism planning in Xi’an.Under the guidelines of the concepts of Lcgibility and Imaginability which set forth by Lynch in the study of urban image,according to the 272 hand-painted sketch cognition maps as the raw material,this article apply the literature research method,questionnaire method,cognitive map,quantitative analysis method and other research methods,then form and judge the destination image through the interpretation of the two basic indicators--the space cognitive elements and the spatial cognitive type.Finally,basis on the scores of various elements,this study further analyzed how the influence factors of demographic characteristics and tourism characteristics affect the tourism destination image of Xi’an,according to research topics.This paper main studies three questions:(1)what tourism destination image of Xi’an the inbound tourists holds;(2)what’s the components and classifications,how the level of identification and Lcgibility and Imaginability of the tourism destination image in Xi’an which the inbound tourists hold;(3)the diversity of Xi’an tourism destination image between the inbound tourists of diverse demographic characteristics and travel characteristics.The main content of the research is as follows:the meaning of the tourism destination image research;the main relevant theoretical review of the cognitive psychology theory and the urban image theory,tourism destination theory and so on;the research status of spatial cognition;questionnaire design of the influence factors of inbound tourists’ tourism destination image;the population characteristic,tourism characteristic,image elements and types of the questionnaire sample;of tourism image of Xi’an destinations impact;through the validation of assumptions,clarify how the demographic characteristic and tourism characteristic influence factors of inbound tourists impact the tourism destination image of Xi’an.The main results are as follows:(1)Based on city image cognition of Xi’an,the spatial type in inbound tourists’cognitive map has a comparative advantage.In tourism destination image spatial cognition,the tourist types showed diversity in the space cognitive map,the cognitive maps painted by inbound tourists has a comparative advantage.The cognitive style of tourism destination image and the information preferences of inbound tourists,combined with the feature of its own activity,leads the result that spatial type map in the cognitive destination image map,drawn by the inbound tourists,has apparent advantages.(2)Overall,tourism destination image of the Xi’an city has a strong Lcgibility and Imaginability.Both the Lcgibility and Imaginability of the cultural elements are highest,of which,the Lcgibility of material elements is higher than the immaterial elements,while its Imaginability is lower than the immaterial type.The score rank of both the immaterial factors’ Lcgibility and Imaginability have a huge difference;the Lcgibility of supporting elements is the highest while the Imaginability of it is lowest;although the Lcgibility of emotional elements is the lowest while the Imaginability is higher,indicating that some of the inbound tourists showed a relatively strong,obvious emotional tendency to the city of Xi’an.(3)Analyzing the tourism destination image of Xi’an,this article finds that the Legibility and the Imaginability of the cultural factors could be the highest.Cultural factor is the core cognitive element of the tourism destination image in Xi’an.Large-scale tourists mainly search for cultural differences,and put the pursuit of natural scenery in the second place.As a famous historical and cultural city,although Xi’an has many famous natural landscapes,the image elements,teem with the cognitive maps painted by inbound tourists,most are the cultural and material image elements with high historical and cultural value.Cultural element,such as historical heritage tourism resources,constitutes the main body of the cognitive image of the ancient city from east.(4)As the inbound tourists’ scope increases,the Imaginability of tourism support elements and the natural landscape elements gradually enhanced.The travel pattern,traffic mode and travel expenditure which decide the tourists’ range,respectively has a significant impact in tourism support elements and natural landscape elements.The enlargement of tourism scope would increase the assessment level of auxiliary elements and the degree of its Imaginability.(5)The emotional factors impacted by the gender,age and family situation structure of tourists.The analysis finds that gender difference is the core element of emotional cognitive factors in tourism destination image.The scores of emotions and the evaluation factors evaluated by female arrivals are higher than male tourists’,because that women pay more attention to emotional experience in the process of tourism and more delicate in the emotional expression;although tourists’ age has a significant impact in emotions and the evaluation factors,but the score trend of emotion and evaluation elements and the trend of tourists’ age are not the same,but the same with the number and proportion of women who to describe this elements;on account of family structure,empty-nest elder women with highly educated and high income constitutes the main body of group who evaluate the factors,the score of emotion and evaluation elements and female proportion are significantly correlated with the women proportion.In general,the score of inbound tourists’ emotion and evaluation elements is significantly correlated with the proportion of women who described this element.(6)The demographic features affect tourism destination image from the core attribute,economic attribute and social attribute.The gender,age,education level,occupation and family structure of tourists have a significant effect in tourism destination image of Xi’an,but nationality and income have nothing to do with it.In the demographic characteristics of inbound tourists,the two factors of age and gender which are the key constitute of statistics elements,has a significant impact in the cultural factors and emotional factors;education level,occupation and income level directly determine the economic level of the tourists.The economic characteristic(besides the income level)has a significant impact in cultural factors;nationality and family structure are the tourists’ social property,and nationality has a significant impact in emotional factors.(7)The tourism features affect inbound tourists’ destination image cognition from time dimension,spatial dimension and cognitive dimensions.Among them,tourism purpose,duration of stay,times of visiting Xi’an,travel pattern,traffic mode,tourism expenditure and information source have a significant impact in tourism destination image,the element of accompanied personnel doesn’t affect the tourism destination image.From the time dimension,duration of stay and times of visiting Xi’an have a significant impact in the cultural factors;from the spatial dimension,travel patterns,traffic mode and tourism expenditure restrict inbound tourists’ activities area,and have a significant impact in the assistant elements;from the cognitive dimension,tourism purposes and information source restrict the depth and direction of visitors knowing about Xi’an and have a significant impact in cultural factors.The present study tries to make the breakthrough as follows:(1)Broking through the limitations of the traditional classification method in similar research,this article excavates and expands elements from material to immaterial one.This article of the tourism destination image research needs to be further.At the same time,this paper provides cognitive elements classification reference to later tourist destination image space studies and to promoting the tourism destination image of Xi’an.(2)This article adopts an innovate method which combines the questionnaire survey research method with recognitive image map method.This paper collects the data through the way of cognitive image map and questionnaire,to capture the information of tourism tourism image.Meanwhile this paper determines a set of quantitative indicators for each element,breaking through the limits of the study method of the cognitive map method’s unstructured method and structured measurement.Through the firsthand data of Xi’an tourism destination image of qualitative research,make up for the deficiency of structured past of the tourism destination image research in past.(3)This dissertation finds that in the Xi’an tourism destination image of inbound tourists,the Lcgibility and Imaginability of the cultural elements are the highest.The cultural elements are the core of the tourism destination image of Xi’an,therefore the positioning of tourism destination image of Xi’an should adhere to the orientation of cultural elements.The deficiencies of this article are:(1)The elements of tourism destination image only pay attention to the conceptual view and should remain to be deeply researched;(2)This research mainly references and imitates the main indicators and measuring method of domestic and overseas literatures to design the questionnaire in the process of the research.Though part of the test projects is corrected through the investigation,the explanatory variables need a further improvement.