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Chinese Outbound Tourists: Understanding Their Attitudes, Constraints and Use of Information Sources

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Chinese Outbound Tourists: Understanding Their Attitudes, Constraints and Use of Information Sources
Tourism Management 30 (2009) 483–494

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Tourism Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman

Chinese Outbound tourists: Understanding their attitudes, constraints and use of information sources
Beverley Sparks a, *, Grace Wen Pan b,1 a b

Tourism, Leisure, Hotel & Sport Management, Griffith Business School, Griffith University, PMB 50, GCMC, Qld. 9726, Australia Head, Travel and Leisure Research, ACNielsen China, the Nielsen Company, 2/F, 618 Yan’an East Road, East Ocean Commercial Centre (II), Shanghai, 200001, P.R. China

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 6 February 2008 Accepted 5 October 2008 Keywords: Chinese outbound tourists Attitudes Travel constraints Information sources Theory of planned behaviour

a b s t r a c t
Drawing upon Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) a survey was developed and implemented in Shanghai, China to investigate potential Chinese outbound tourists’ values in terms of destination attributes, as well as attitudes toward international travel. Five destination attributes were rated as most important by this potential group of tourists and included the natural beauty and icons of a destination, quality infrastructure, autonomy, inspirational motives and social self-enhancement. In terms of predicting intentions to travel, social normative influences and perceived levels of personal control constraints were most influential based on TPB. The use of information sources in seeking information about a destination was also investigated. The evidence obtained suggests that television programs are an important source of information used by Chinese people to learn about target destinations. The role of the Internet as an information source was also shown to be substantial and stands to have a stronger impact over time. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Background The Chinese population is growing in affluence, with outbound travel continuing to climb


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