 The symbolism of international tourism in national identityI-Chieh Michelle Yang, Juliana Angeline French, Christina Lee and Motoki Watabe Annals of Tourism Research, 2020, vol. 83, issue C Abstract: Drawing on symbolic interactionism, this paper explores the nexus between tourism and national identity in China. Unlike current research's focus on the role of inbound heritage tourism sites in fostering national identity, this study uses symbolic interactionism to frame an analysis of how Chinese national identity is expressed and affirmed as a phenomenon of experiential consumption through the act of international outbound tourism. A multi-method approach guided the data collection from 28 Chinese tourists in two groups. Data analysis follows a constructivist grounded theory approach that is expressly suited to symbolic interactionism. The findings revealed that international tourism offers a platform on which to affirm and express Chinese national identity through the symbolic interaction between Chinese tourists and the world outside of China. Keywords: National identity; Chinese outbound tourism; Symbolic interactionism; Identity affirmation; Identity expression; Dialectic process of national identity (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:83:y:2020:i:c:s0160738320301109 DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2020.102966 Access Statistics for this article Annals of Tourism Research is currently edited by John Tribe More articles in Annals of Tourism Research from Elsevier |
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