旅游者异质性对目的地绩效的影响研究

The Effects of Tourist Heterogeneity on Destination Performance

对于同一目的地,不同旅游者的旅游体验往往存在差异,因此,满意-绩效研究中应充分考虑旅游者异质性特征的影响。文章突破了传统的满意度均值和方差指标的局限,借助对网络游记的分析,创造性地构建了同质化满意与异质化满意两个新变量,更加有效地衡量了旅游者的同质性与异质性特征,并在此基础之上验证了两者与目的地绩效间的关系。文章通过对中国60个旅游城市数据的分析发现:以满意度均值衡量的满意同质性对绩效的影响显著(H1),但解释力有限;以往利用满意度方差来衡量旅游者满意异质性,进而提升对目的地绩效解释力的思路(H2),由于多重共线性问题难以真正实现;构建的同质化满意与异质化满意两个新变量,不仅对目的地绩效有显著的正向影响,而且在传统的满意度均值-绩效模型的基础之上具有较好的增益效度(H3、H4),这为旅游者群体特征及目的地绩效等领域的研究提供了有价值的启发。

In the past, under the guidance of USP theory, marketing efforts have focused on the most prominent characteristics of the product. However, customers are increasingly becoming individualized,and this is even more so evident in the tourism sector. From the perspective of supply, a tourist destination in itself covers a wealth of features which gives tourists abundant options to personalize.From the perspective of demand, independent travelers have diverse and complex requirements.Furthermore, every tourist has his own specific travel experiences with ever more heterogeneous characteristics, thus the composite image of a tourist destination has a more significant long- tailed distribution. Using the common satisfaction evaluation scale, it is hypothesized that tourists have homogeneous features in the study of relationships between tourist satisfaction and tourism destination performance. However, the fact is that although visiting the same destination, each tourist has very different background and travel experiences. Therefore, the impact of tourists＇ heterogeneity should be fully considered in the research concerning tourist satisfaction and tourism destination performance.To extract the impact of tourists＇ heterogeneity on destination performance, this paper proposes four hypotheses. Firstly, with existing theoretical research achievements, hypotheses H1 and H2 are presented, which states that both tourists＇ satisfaction homogeneity and satisfaction heterogeneity have positive influences on destination performance. Secondly, on the basis of destination image theory and in-depth analysis of tourists＇ travelogues posted on the internet, this paper finds that tourists have both similar and distinct perceptions of destinations. For the purposes of this study the similarity in satisfaction is described to be ＂Homogeneous Satisfaction＂, while the diversity in satisfaction is described to be＂Heterogeneous Satisfaction＂. These two terms respectively describes the homogeneity and heterogeneity of tourists. Lastly, this paper takes＂Total Frequencies of Head Image Words＂and＂Total Number of Tail Image Words＂as the corresponding observational variables of＂Homogeneous Satisfaction＂and＂Heterogeneous Satisfaction＂. Therefore, H3 and H4 are stated as follows; both tourists Homogeneous Satisfaction and Heterogeneous Satisfaction have a positive impact on destination performance.Statistical models have been established to identify the influences of tourists＇ heterogeneity on destination performance. Data were gathered from databases of 60 cities. Stepwise regression results reveal that（1） Satisfaction homogeneity（mean value of visitor scores） has significant impact on destination performance, thus H1 could be verified. This implies that the traditional theoretical framework of satisfaction-performance studies is applicable, but the applicability is limited.（2） Due to the multicollinearity problem, it is impossible to utilize the variance of satisfaction scores to evaluate the satisfaction heterogeneity, and then to test its influence on destination performance. Consequently,the hypothesized relationship between satisfaction heterogeneity and destination performance, also known as H2 could not be verified by the satisfaction scores obtained from third party online sources.As a result, an alternative variable should be found to measure the heterogeneity of tourists.（3） Both homogeneous and heterogeneous satisfaction has positive effects on destination performance, meaning these two are effective explanatory variables. Both H3 and H4 have therefore been verified. Results imply that tourists＇ personalized experiences have effects as important as their similar feelings do. In this sense, the findings could give implications for the future studies in destination management and tourist satisfaction. Tourists＇ heterogeneous characteristics are not incorporated in the destination marketing mix and more attention should be paid to meet the individualized demands of tourists.