Tourists' strategies: An acculturation approach

Highlights

• We applied Berry's (1997) bidimensional acculturation model to a tourist context.

• We examined recent tourists from China, Germany, and the United States.

• Tourists were found to assimilate, integrate, separate, or marginalize.

• Subgroup membership differentiates behavioral, activity and destination preferences.

• Ethnocentrism and uncertainty avoidant differs between tourist subgroups.

Abstract

Acculturation theory has been widely used to understand and explain migrant and sojourner adaptation. However, it has yet to be examined in a tourist context. We extended the literature by evaluating the applicability of Berry's (1997) bidimensional acculturation model to a sample of 668 recent and prospective international travelers from China (n = 205), Germany (n = 201), and the United States (n = 262). Our results suggested that the acculturation model can be extended to tourist contexts and used for segmentation purposes. Specifically, tourists' acculturation strategies were associated with their preferences for home culture maintenance and host culture immersion, as well as behavioral, holiday, and activity preferences. Ethnocentrism and uncertainty avoidance were also found to vary as a function of tourists' acculturation strategy.

Introduction

Acculturation is the process of adjusting to a new cultural environment and can involve changes to an individual's attitudes, behaviors, and cognitions (Tsai, Chentsova-Dutton, & Wong, 2002). Most acculturation research has examined how these changes relate to the psychological and socio-cultural adaptation of immigrants (e.g., Berry, Phinney, Sam, & Vedder, 2006) and sojourners, including international students (e.g., Rasmi, Safdar, & Lewis, 2010) and expatriate workers (e.g., Ward & Rana-Deuba, 1999). Interestingly, although tourism is the most common form of face-to-face intercultural contact (Berno & Ward, 2005), there have been few applications of acculturation theory in tourism contexts (Ward, 2008).

This is surprising, as acculturation has direct relevance to tourism because it focuses on the degree to which people wish to immerse themselves in a host culture and/or maintain their home culture in intercultural contact situations (Berry, 2003). Interestingly, a number of tourism studies have identified subgroups of tourists who appear to vary in their preferences for host culture immersion and home culture maintenance. For example, Cohen (1972) categorized tourists based on their desire for familiarity (aligned with their home culture) versus strangeness (aligned with the host culture) and argued that these classifications were relevant to holiday activity and destination preferences. Although some tourism studies have considered home culture maintenance and host culture immersion, most have been descriptive rather than based on theoretical frameworks. Indeed, Berry's (1997) bidimensional acculturation theory, which is the most widely used acculturation model, has been largely overlooked by tourism researchers, despite being extremely influential in explaining and predicting immigrant and sojourners' behaviors and adaptation (Huynh, Howell, & Benet-Martinez, 2009).

In this paper, we posed three research questions that address gaps in the literature to provide useful information for tourism researchers and practitioners who are interested in segmenting tourist markets. First, we examined the applicability of Berry's (1997) acculturation model to a tourism context. Second, we investigated whether tourists' acculturation strategies were related to their behavioral, holiday activity, and destination preferences. Third, we explored whether individual difference factors, such as perceived cultural similarity, ethnocentrism and uncertainty avoidance, were related to tourists' acculturation strategies. We examined these issues by asking a sample of recent international travelers and prospective tourists from China, Germany, and the United States (US) to indicate their acculturation preferences as potential tourists to Australia.

Australia is a major tourist destination that had more than five million visitors in 2011. During this time, Australia hosted large numbers of tourists from Asian, European and North American countries (e.g., 154,000 Germans, 438,000 Americans and 463,000 Chinese). These and other tourists made substantial contributions to the Australian economy, as they spent almost two billion dollars in Australia (Tourism Research Australia, 2012). It is clear that tourism has a major impact on the Australian economy and that international visitors have widely varying backgrounds that should be taken into account.

China, Germany, and the US were chosen for the current study as they vary in cultural distance from Australia and are important source markets for this and other destinations. For example, Ng, Lee, and Soutar (2007) found China to be the most culturally distant and the US to be the least culturally distant of these three countries on five reported measures, including individual (i.e., perceived cultural distance) and country indicators (i.e., Clark and Pugh's (2001) cultural cluster distance index; Jackson's (2001) cultural diversity index; Kogut and Singh's (1988) cultural distance index; and West and Graham's (2004) linguistic distance). Further, more than 20% of Australia's inbound tourists come from these countries and all were in Australia's top ten source countries in 2011, ranking third, tenth, and fourth, respectively. However, less than 1% of the tourists from these countries came to Australia (Tourism Australia, 2012), suggesting tourism from these countries can be increased.

However, there are at least two challenges for long-haul destinations such as Australia (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2003). First, there is a changing international tourist trend toward shorter holidays spent in closer destinations. This shift is likely to affect Australia and other long-haul destinations more negatively than most. Thus, long-haul destinations will need to effectively position their offerings to overcome their distance from most home markets. Second, international tourists today seek different experiences, products, and activities. To maximize revenue, it is imperative to retain tourists who are already interested in visiting Australia, but to also attract those who may be less inclined to visit. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to identify subgroups, predict their behavioral preferences and attitudes toward holiday destinations and activities and understand the backgrounds of the various subgroups, so as to market to them more effectively. Here, subgroups of tourists were identified through Berry's (1997) bidimensional acculturation theory and these differences were examined.