2020 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
The role of intra-cultural and cross-cultural tourist-tourist interactions in the tourism service encounter
| Project/Area Number |
18K11864
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| Research Institution | Otaru University of Commerce |
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Principal Investigator |
Praet Carolus 小樽商科大学, 商学部, 教授 (40292081)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
鈴木 和宏 小樽商科大学, 商学部, 准教授 (10708366)
王 力勇 小樽商科大学, 商学部, 准教授 (70772466)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2018-04-01 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | social interaction / tourism marketing / service encounter / cross-cultural / segment compatibility / tourism |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This project investigates both cross-cultural and intra-cultural tourist-tourist interaction and the role it plays in the overall visitor experience. During the first stage of the research project, we collected qualitative data from domestic and international tourists in Japan. We conducted 18 interviews in English, mainly with Western tourists, 28 interviews with Chinese tourists, and 26 interviews with domestic Japanese tourists.
Results of the Chinese data appeared as a chapter of Sustainable and Collaborative Tourism in a Digital World in April 2021. In January 2021, a second paper appeared in Tourism Planning & Development, a B-rated journal (ABDC journal quality list), or second-tier (Q2) journal (SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator).
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
4: Progress in research has been delayed.
Reason
Due to our focus on the data of Chinese tourists, the analysis of our data of Western and Japanese tourists has taken longer than expected. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought global tourism and in particular inbound tourism to Japan to an almost complete stop, preventing us to collect additional data on inbound tourists. The COVID-19 pandemic has also forced us to spend more time on crisis management and development of online teaching content, diminishing the time we could allocate to research.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on global tourism will force us to postpone quantitative surveys until inbound tourism to Japan returns to normal. We expect that it may take until 2022 for the pandemic to be brought under control in Japan and for inbound tourism to resume.
We decided to temporarily shift the focus of our research to China, where domestic tourism has now resumed. At the end of March 2021 we conducted an online survey on the impact of COVID-19 on social interaction with other tourists among among 500 Chinese leisure travelers. We will start the analysis of this data set shortly and plan to present our findings in international online conferences and intend to submit a paper based on this survey to an international tourism journal.
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| Causes of Carryover |
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were no inbound travelers to Japan that we could survey. In addition, international conference travel expenses were less than anticipated due to the cancellation or moving online of conferences. We plan to allocate the unused FY 2020 budget to travel to international conferences and online survey expenditures in FY 2021 and may ask for an extension of the project to FY 2022 depending on how the COVID-19 crisis will affect global travel in FY 2021. If possible, we will also allocate budget to conduct additional surveys among inbound travelers.
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Research Products
(4 results)
