Research On Study Tour Participants’ Novelty Seeking

With the acceleration and development of going globalized for higher education,student exchange programs are flourishing very well,which also gradually displays the touristization feature.Since it officially opened in 2008 that mainland residents can start to travel in Taiwan,Taiwan,the island with beautiful scenery and diverse culture has attracted lots of mainland tourists for sightseeing.Currently,the Mainland has already become the largest tourist source market for the tourism industry in Taiwan.As the cross-strait communication and exchanges have become closer and the issue of three important laws(Act on the Relations of the Two Sides of the Straits,University Law,Junior College Law),student exchange programs and academic communication between two sides have been increasingly booming well.Culture seeking,touristization feature,as well as the nature of short stay all compose the feature of study tour of exchange students.Novelty-seeking is the strong driving force that impact the students who take part in the exchange programm.Under such context,this thesis is of dual theoretical and practical value since it looks into the student exchange programs and regards it as a creative training and tourism program,analyzes the establishment of the subjects’ novelty seeking and functional mechanisms as well as the forward effect of their satisfaction and the destination revisit intention.By summarizing the concepts of exchange students,study tour,novelty seeking,satisfaction as well as destination revisit intention and going through literature review,this thesis discussed the working mechanism among novelty seeking,satisfaction and temporal destination revisit intention and established the hypothetical model based on this.This thesis took the exchange students who went to Taiwan as the analysis target and sent out the questionnaires concerning four parts:9 measurement variables for novelty seeking;2 measurement variables for satisfaction;4 measurement variables for temporal destination revisit intention and demographic characters.By analyzing the collected data through methods like mean difference test,structural equation model(SEM)etc.,and statistical analysis software like Excel,SPSS,AMOS,etc.,this thesis looked into the novelty seeking’ differences in terms of demographics and examined the reliability,validity and path of the hypothetical model and finally drew out the conclusion.Targeting at the improvement of exchange students’ creative training and tourism program in Taiwan,this thesis also put forward some reasonable suggestions.Research conclusions are listed as follows:1.By collecting average descriptive data of novelty seeking,satisfaction and temporal destination revisit intention and analyzing the difference of novelty seeking in terms of demographics through mean difference test,it has been found out that the levels of novelty seeking,satisfaction and temporal destination revisit intention are generally high for exchange students who came to Taiwan.In terms of the 9 measurement variables,"experiencing different cultures" and "adding the understanding of local customs and practices in Taiwan"constituted the most significant ones.Also there existed differences for gender,whether the students had travelled outbound before,and whether the students had travelled in Taiwan before.There do not existed differences for grade,hometown.By comparing and analyzing this result with that in the existing literature books,it has been finally concluded that novelty seeking was one of the major force to push exchange students participate in the exchange programs.2.By verifying the hypothetical model through structural equation model,it has been found out that the novelty seeking for exchange students who came to Taiwan exerted a significant influence over satisfaction.Although there did not lie direct impact between novelty seeking and destination revisit intention,novelty seeking can still influence the latter one indirectly through the path "novelty seeking→satisfaction→temporal destination revisit intention.3.By verifying the hypothetical model through structural equation model,it can be concluded that the satisfaction from exchange students for the creative training and tourism program can directly influence the short-term destination revisit intention but cannot have a marked and direct influence over the short-medium,medium-long and long-term destination revisit intention.Apart from this,short-term destination revisit intention can have a direct impact on the short-medium term destination revisit intention,short-medium term destination revisit intention can have a direct impact on the medium-long term destination revisit intention and medium-long term destination revisit intention can have a direct impact on the long-term destination revisit intention.However,it needed to be pointed out that there were some differences regarding the influential degree for different time periods.This thesis can provide theoretical references for studies concerning exchange students,creative training and tourism programs and their novelty seeking and also offer reasonable suggestions for aspects like managing exchange students,creating a proper social environment for the creative training and tourism program,etc.