Does Travel Really Enhance Destination-Country Image? Understanding Tourists’ Changes in Perception toward a Destination Country

Peng Yu and Hongmei Zhang
Additional contact information
Peng Yu: School of Geography and Ocean Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Hongmei Zhang: Shanghai Institute of Tourism, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 10, 1-12

Abstract: Tourism has played a fundamental role in shaping the image of destination countries. This study aimed to examine changes in international tourists’ enhanced and complex destination-country images (DCIs) by comparing pre- and post-trip perceptions. A total of 268 and 275 valid questionnaires from pre- and post-trip Chinese outbound tourists to South Korea, respectively, were collected. The results indicated that tourists’ DCIs were dynamic and could be effectively promoted through their actual tourism experiences. Overall, when considering enhanced DCI perception, compared with pre-trip tourists, post-trip tourists possessed a positive complex DCI perception. Tourism could provide an important channel for promoting a destination country’s image to the world.

Keywords: destination-country image; enhanced image; complex image; perception changes; tourism experiences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/10/4294/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/10/4294/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:10:p:4294-:d:362324

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().