Tapping the Chinese Market: an Examination of Chinese Tourists' Images and Constraints Towards Cruising

Abstract

This study examined Chinese tourists' images and constraints towards cruising, and their influences on cruising desires/intentions. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies were utilized. Based on an extensive literature review, semistructured interviews were conducted to determine measurement items for constructs of interest. Quantitative data were then collected in order to examine the proposed hypotheses. An innovative procedure for developing the best items to be included in the scales was utilized. The results revealed that: 1) images were antecedents of desires and intentions; 2) negative cognitive images have a strong influence on constraints; and 3) constraints were found to have no significant influence on intentions. Both theoretical and practical implications are suggested.

Constraints to domestic ocean cruise participation among higher income Chinese adults

“…As the only identified Chinese cruise constraint paper in the Chinese academic literature, this source corroborates Dong and Chick (), who found that respondents in six major Chinese cities cited time and money as the biggest constraints to overall leisure activity. The importance of time constraints, corroborating Kerstetter et al () as well as Hung and Petrick () in their U.S.‐based investigations (see Table ), was not evident in a more recent convenience sample of 309 Chinese adults collected from the international departure lounge of Guangzhou airport and from consumers who had requested information about overseas travel from two Chinese travel agencies (Zou & Petrick, , ). Rather, the not‐an‐option item of preference for other travel alternatives was the most important constraint, followed by the three structural items of insufficient cruise information, expense (no income threshold was imposed on this sample), and immaturity of the Chinese ocean cruise industry.…”

“…Also reflecting the latter, the statement “I heard bad news about ocean cruising” was added to reflect social and conventional media coverage of negative cruise and ferry experiences, and “I cannot afford it” was substituted for “too expensive” to reflect preferred wording of the affordability dimension. That the item from Zou and Petrick (, ) concerning the immaturity of the domestic ocean cruise industry did not appear in the open‐ended responses may at least in part reflect the rapid development of that sector in the 3‐year data collection interval between those and the current study. The final version of the questionnaire can be seen in the Appendix.…”

“…Kerstetter et al () and Hung and Petrick () provided the initial list of candidate constraints. Zou and Petrick (, ) were not yet available at the time of questionnaire development and administration. From this lengthy inventory, similar items were amalgamated, outliers removed, and wording amended to better ensure concordance with the Chinese sociocultural context and clarity for Chinese respondents as ascertained by the Chinese members of the author team and opportunistically selected Chinese students from their host universities.…”

“…Accordingly identified as well were 11 constraints deemed sufficiently important to include in the main survey. As per the open‐ended responses, “lack of knowledge” (not included in either U.S.‐based study) was added to reflect the lower Chinese cruise awareness, a finding also in Zou and Petrick (, ). Also reflecting the latter, the statement “I heard bad news about ocean cruising” was added to reflect social and conventional media coverage of negative cruise and ferry experiences, and “I cannot afford it” was substituted for “too expensive” to reflect preferred wording of the affordability dimension.…”

“…Comparable importance of safety and security concerns, an intrapersonal item, may be associated with contemporary publicity surrounding the sinking of a South Korean passenger ferry with extensive loss of life. Sample heterogeneity was revealed by subsequent cluster analysis (Zou & Petrick, ), which identified distinctive “high‐constraint” (43%), “moderate‐constraint” (31%), and “low‐constraint” (26%) segments. Gender identity emerged as the only significant independent demographic variable, with females, in contrast to Kerstetter et al (), more likely to adhere to the low‐constraint cluster.…”