‘Gap Year' in China: views from the participants and implications for the future

Mao-Ying Wu, Philip Pearce, Keji Huang and Tingting Fan

Current Issues in Tourism, 2015, vol. 18, issue 2, 158-174

Abstract: The present study is one of the first to assess the characteristics and consider the implications of the emerging gap year phenomenon within China. More specifically, the research answers three questions: (1) Who are the Chinese gap year takers? (2) What motivates the Chinese gap year participants' involvement in the new activity? and (3) How does the concept of a Chinese gap year differ from its Western counterpart? A netnographic study of 103 blogs was followed by 18 in-depth telephone interviews. The findings were compared with existing knowledge from studies about the Western gap year participants. It was found that individuals taking a Chinese gap year differed from their western counterparts both in demographic and behavioural terms. The type of gap year (career gap vs. pre-university gap) and forces from within the broader Chinese cultural context are producing a growing, distinctive and positively perceived travel phenomenon. The present study offers initial implications for international tourism marketing, as well as posing questions about the flexibility of educational programmes and human resource management in China; all of these interest groups might be able to meet the needs of this emerging niche market more creatively.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13683500.2014.946478 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:rcitxx:v:18:y:2015:i:2:p:158-174

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rcit20

DOI: 10.1080/13683500.2014.946478

Access Statistics for this article

Current Issues in Tourism is currently edited by Jennifer Tunstall

More articles in Current Issues in Tourism from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().