Human-place relationship and word-of-mouth behaviour to promote the place as a destination: The construct, antecedents, and outcomes

Download files
Access & Terms of Use
open access
Copyright: Chen, Ning
Altmetric
Abstract
Concepts and theories from Marketing and branding have been widely applied to tourism contexts in understanding the relationship between an individual and a destination. However, the human-place relationship is much more complex than human-brand relationship. Therefore more in-depth analysis is called for in human-place relationship research. Due to the development of social media, residents and tourists are playing increasingly important roles in place promotion. However, the consumer-to-consumer (C2C) phenomenon in the context of tourism has not received adequate attention from researchers. There are a number of problems understanding the motivations of this behaviour. This study starts with an attempt to understand the complex and multiple nature of human-place relationship. It proposes a six-dimension construct of place attachment (place identity, place dependence, social bonding, interactional past, and interactional potential), as well as a different taxonomy dividing word-of-mouth into three types (one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many) in terms of how the information is communicated. Furthermore a conceptual framework is proposed which presents the construct of place attachment as a determinant of different types of positive word-of-mouth behaviour for studying local residents and experienced tourists about their destination region. This conceptual framework is tested by several empirical studies in Australia and China. The thesis is structured by three different studies: Study One examines the proposed dimensionality and measurement of place attachment. A sample of 330 Shanghai residents and 361 Sydney residents is used to test the construct model, and the results are statistically acceptable. Study Two examines the dimensionality and measurement of word-of-mouth and the conceptual model of place attachment indicating the behaviour of word-of-mouth, with the same sample from Study One. The results indicate a strong impact of different dimensions of place attachment on word-of-mouth behaviour. In Study Three, the theoretical model is applied to study a special group of residents, Chinese students in Australia, to understand how Chinese students attachment to both China and Australia may influence their word-of-mouth behaviour to promote Australia as a favourable destination to their acquaintance in China. In the conclusion, the contributions, limitations, as well as further discussions are addressed.
Persistent link to this record
Link to Publisher Version
Link to Open Access Version
Additional Link
Author(s)
Chen, Ning
Supervisor(s)
Dwyer, Larry
Firth, Tracey
Creator(s)
Editor(s)
Translator(s)
Curator(s)
Designer(s)
Arranger(s)
Composer(s)
Recordist(s)
Conference Proceedings Editor(s)
Other Contributor(s)
Corporate/Industry Contributor(s)
Publication Year
2012
Resource Type
Thesis
Degree Type
PhD Doctorate
UNSW Faculty
Files
download whole.pdf 1.17 MB Adobe Portable Document Format
Related dataset(s)