Cross‐cultural tourist behaviour: a replication and extension involving Hofstede's uncertainty avoidance dimension

Abstract

Hofstede's five cross-cultural dimensions have been broadly applied in the literature. Money and Crotts recently applied the dimension of uncertainty avoidance to a matched sample comprised of low uncertainty avoidance German and high uncertainty avoidance Japanese tourists, finding their behaviours consistent with those behaviours predicted by Hofstede. This study both replicates and extends their research across a representative sample of first time leisure visitors to the USA representing 58 nations. It was found that visitors from high uncertainty avoidance cultures exhibited behaviours consistent with those of the Japanese in the Money and Crotts research, whereas visitors from low-uncertainty avoidance cultures behaved similarly to their German subjects. Such findings, across a broad sample population, validate the original research through a more rigorous test of its propositions, provide increased confidence regarding their generalisability, and further contribute to our understanding of the influence of national culture on tourist behaviour.

Influence of Customer Perceived Value on Tourist Satisfaction and Revisit Intention: A study on Guesthouses in Maldives

“…However as discussed in literature, Epistemic values are very important to satisfy and encourages to revisit. In past literature it was found that adventure seeking behaviour such as risk taking and exploring out of safer boundaries gives personal satisfaction (Sibthorp, et al, 2007; and for travelers who enjoy in different cultures learning and experiencing the world and finds pleasure from it (Litvin, et al, 2004;. The difference in finding could be that the past research are carried out among luxury hotels and Yachts and tourists who stay in Guesthouses could be different.…”

Social media use for travel purposes: a cross cultural comparison between Portugal and the UK

“…The UK also has much higher levels of masculinity than Portugal. Research addressing national culture comparisons typically include countries representing different levels of one or more cultural dimensions (Litvin et al 2004). Thus, these countries were considered relevant for conducting a comparison to evaluate the influence of the cultural characteristics on social media use for travel purposes A similar procedure to select countries for cross-cultural research has been conducted in other studies (e.g.…”

“…Indeed, this framework is considered to be the most comprehensive national cultural framework in cross-cultural studies (Litvin et al 2004;Hsu et al 2013) and can be used to explain and predict behaviors (Hofstede 1980). In Hofstede (1980) original work, country cultures were categorized into four groups according to: power distance (PDI), individualism versus collectivism (IDV), masculinity versus femininity (MAS), uncertainty avoidance (UAI).…”

“…Some examples in this field include examining the influence of culture on tourist's behavior (e.g. Litvin et al 2004), on consumer's evaluation of travel services (e.g. Crotts and Erdmann 2000) Power distance Expresses the degree to which the less powerful members of a society accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.…”

“…They explain these results by the fact that Belgians try to eliminate uncertainty related to trips with higher search efforts, concluding that the uncertainty avoidance cultural dimension affects how individuals search for travel information on the Internet. Also based on the uncertainty avoidance dimensions, Litvin et al (2004) found that respondents with different scores exhibited different travel behaviors. For example, respondents from higher uncertainty avoidance cultures were more likely to acquire information from friends and relatives.…”