A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Local and Foreign Tourist Preferences Towards Selected Visual Images of Malaysian Landscapes
Image has been supported as one of the primary factors in deciding where to travel. The great stride in tourism industry has brought up the interest in investigating what people like in the environment. This study compares the preferences for visual images of Malaysian landscapes among the local...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
2005
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/6190/1/FRSB_2005_6.pdf |
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| Summary: | Image has been supported as one of the primary factors in deciding where to travel. The
great stride in tourism industry has brought up the interest in investigating what people
like in the environment. This study compares the preferences for visual images of
Malaysian landscapes among the local and foreign tourists in Malaysia. There were 120
local and 74 foreign tourists sampled in this study. The settings consisted of 60 colour
photographs of four categories: beach, highland, rural, and landmark structure. Two
phases were involved in the study. In the first phase, Category-Identifling Methodology
(CIM) (Kaplans,1989) was used to measure people's reaction to landscapes, where
participants were exposed to the set of 60 colour photographs. The participants rated each
of the scene on a seven-point rating scale, for their preference and reasons for their
preference were recorded. The second phase involved a focus group of selected panels
fiom different fields to get their opinions on the content of the preferred images and the
economic values in terms of their willingness to pay for the images. This study has identified significant differences in the preferences of local and foreign
tourists for highland and beach category. Comparison of preference shows that the local
tourists prefer landscape images with "dense, green vegetation with fav elements;
prospect and refige" characteristics; the British and Japanese both prefer the "Isolated,
unpolluted, beach and sea; coastal forest" landscape images and the Chinese prefers
images with "skyline, tall buildings, and greens, blue sky or water and white clouds;
modem architecture ". A Content Analysis for reasons of preferences reveals that images
with more 'natural', 'peacefir, 'beauti$d', 'colourjiil' and the presence of 'water'
elements are more preferred. Willingness To Pay (WTP) analysis finds that a single one
time donation that was agreed upon by the panellists to preserve the landscape resources
is RM466.67 (mean), while the maximum amount per year that they are willing to pay to
enjoy the resources is RM3 14.44 (mean). |
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