Developing a typology of diaspora tourists: return travel by Chinese immigrants in North America

This paper examines the role played by tourism in affecting cultural identity and place attachment among members of the North American Chinese diaspora who travel to China. Previous literature portrays diaspora tourists as homogeneous and suggests that home return travel engenders broadly similar impacts on the individual. This study reveals diasporic communities are quite diverse and complex. Five types of diaspora tourist are identified, each having distinct travel motives, experiences, migration backgrounds, cultural identities and place attachments. The consequences of diaspora tourism particularly in terms of place attachment and cultural identity are further discussed, as home return travel induces positive, neutral and negative reactions

Effects of place attachment on home return travel: a spatial perspective

Recent studies on place-mobility relationships suggest an increasing possibility that people can have multiple place attachments at varied spatial scales. Yet our understanding of how place attachment in different spatial scales affects mobility remains limited. This study investigates home return visits by Chinese diaspora tourists from North America who have made multiple trips to China. A total of 27 in-depth interviews with repeat home return travellers was conducted. Four different types of return movements were identified: local; dispersed; local & dispersed; and second-migration locale focused. A relationship was found between the participants’ sense of place, place identity and home return travel. The findings suggest that home return travel is more complex than previously thought. More focused sense of place and strong personal connection to ancestral homes may lead to more localized return, while a more generic sense of place (i.e. to ‘China’) and collective personal identity would result in a more dispersed travel pattern. Family migration history and strong attachment to family’s first migration destination also leads to focused return to the place. The study highlights the fact that place and place attachment are deeply personal and can evolve over time and space

Travel as learned behaviour: Western migrants in Hong Kong and Macau

This paper examines travel by western migrants who have moved to the Hong Kong or Macau Special Administrative Regions of China. Previous research suggests travel patterns are a form of learned behaviour. New migrants initially exhibit patterns learned from their home countries, but over time their patterns change and reflect more those of residents of their new countries as they learn and adopt new behaviours. This situation was not observed among western migrants. Instead, they exhibited patterns that were internally consistent, regardless of the migrant's origin, but different from those of the local Chinese populace. The paper argues that western migrants, who generally live in a parallel expatriate bubble to those host community, have learned travel patterns from others who also live in that bubble

Economic sustainability of heritage conservation in Hong Kong: The impact of heritage buildings on adjacent property prices

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Informed by the theoretical framework of sustainable development and economic theories including the cluster theory and the corollary of the Coase Theorem, this paper empirically investigates the economic impact of architectural heritage in Hong Kong. Using the hedonic price model, the research examines the economic impact of 50 publicly owned versus 50 privately owned heritage buildings on adjacent residential property prices with a sample size of over 43,240 property transaction records spanning a time period of 10 years. The research supports that heritage conservation can promote economic sustainability aside from cultural sustainability and social engagement. This research benefits government policymakers, urban planners, architects, and heritage conservationists by contributing new knowledge to the studies on sustainable urban development, heritage conservation, and cultural economics

Towards reviving post-Olympic Athens as a cultural destination

This paper examines the effects of global change on the status and qualities of the Greek national capital, Athens, focusing on how they affect the development of cultural tourism in the city. Although Athens constituted one of the most significant destinations for Greek tourism in the past, in recent years it started to weaken. Athens is characterised by a series of problems, among them are the degradation of its environment and quality of life and traffic congestion. However, in terms of tourism development, the Olympic Games helped in re-imaging the city and upgrading its infrastructure. This study based on semi-structured interviews with top officials reveals how global change has affected Athens’ socio-cultural/economic status, identity and image. Despite the tourism policy/planning responses to global changes, Athens’ tourism continues to decline leaving unexplored potential such as its rich cultural heritage, new multicultural identity and the New Acropolis Museum. The paper suggests that cultural elements of capital cities must be multidimensional including a variety of attractions and amenities. The use of cultural heritage assets needs to be in line with global developments in order for cities to effectively leverage heritage for cultural tourism

Empowerment and women in adventure tourism : a negotiated journey

Women’s participation in adventure tourism is growing, yet few studies have explored this group of tourists. This conceptual paper seeks to extend our understanding of female adventure tourists by examining the empowering journey women can take through constraint negotiation to enjoy the benefits of adventure tourism. Using content analysis to review the literature on women’s adventure experiences in tourism and recreation settings reveals prominent themes that have been consolidated to propose constraint, negotiation and benefit categories. A conceptual model is presented that illustrates the opportunities for women’s empowerment within these categories and examines the interrelationships and interdependency between them. The model shows that constraints, negotiations and benefits can be experienced simultaneously, at different points in a woman’s adventure tourism journey and used as a vehicle for empowerment. Women will also re-evaluate these categories before, during and after their adventure tourism experience. Therefore, the categories are not fixed and evolve each time a woman participates in adventure tourism throughout her life. Suggestions are made for further study in this under-researched area

The business of cultural heritage tourism: critical success factors

This paper explores critical success factors (CSFs) required for cultural heritage tourism (CHT) operation and how these relate to commercial focus. The literature indicates tension between conservation of authenticity and commercial focus as it is seen to undermine authenticity, potentially degrading its quality and ultimate success as a tourism product. A list of nine key CHT business success factors was devised based on the published literature. Managers and operators of a range of Australian CHT operations were interviewed regarding achievement of CSFs. The operations were broadly categorised according to the level of commercial focus. The level of commercial focus was cross tabulated with the number of CHT business CSFs achieved. While all places in this study had addressed authenticity, CHT places presenting highly commercialised products tended to meet the criteria for achieving a greater number of CSFs than their less commercialised counter-parts. This has implications for sustainable CHT operation practices

Analysing Visits to English Museums 1850-2015: A Research Note

<p>Understanding why people visit museums is of interest to both cultural economics and museum studies. Most existing research relies on survey data concerned with visitors, their immediate background, and their experience of a particular museum. Very few studies have taken a more general perspective and analysed macro-level societal factors, such as inflation, educational attainment and unemployment, and their influence on the number of visits to museums. The conventional approach relies on visitor surveys to understand what drives visits and people’s general views on museums.</p> <p>In a departure from these conventional approaches, this article presents a macro-level approach, using a unique dataset of visit counts for 40 English museums and visitor attractions spanning the period 1850–2015. It examines the effect of socio-economic factors on visits using panel data analysis and macro-level variables. The results suggest that inflation rates, average earnings, and educational level (using the indicator of secondary school attendance) all significantly influence the number of visits made. However, the most important variable is the number of visits recorded for the previous year. These findings are discussed in relation to existing studies, and some suggestions for future research are proposed.</p

Women's mountaineering: accessing participation benefits through constraint negotiation strategies

The purpose of this study is to investigate the strategies women use to negotiate mountaineering participation constraints and the resultant benefits from participation. Survey responses from 321 female mountaineers produced four constraint negotiation dimensions and three participation benefit dimensions using confirmatory factor analysis. Three of the four negotiation dimensions support earlier findings in the literature on women’s experiences of adventure activities. The identification of a fourth dimension relating to ‘confidence and adaptation’ represents a new contribution. Similarly, the three benefit dimensions largely support existing literature. However, some benefits loaded on different dimensions to what has previously been reported and verifying the influence of each negotiation dimension on specific benefit dimensions also represents an original contribution. Therefore, this study extends our understanding of female adventure participants and quantitatively verifies women’s constraint negotiation and participation benefits in the context of mountaineering. Accordingly, this study makes an important theoretical contribution to the understanding of women’s adventure experiences in mountaineering, which may be of interest to others researching female participation in other adventure activities. The findings also suggest that mountaineering is a space that is being used as a means to resist gendered expectations and to gain empowerment