Consumer Behavior in Travel and Tourism

This group project is being developed for HTM3121 - a level 3 subject at the School of Hotel & Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Guidelines

• Try and get familiar with how to add content or edit the wiki for your team project.
• If you delete anything by mistake remember you can quickly go back to the previous version.
• Sign up for the 'watchlist' at the top or foot of your project page so you are informed of any updates by your team and keep track of progress.

REMEMBER

• Everything you write in your Group Wiki must be your own work, do not cut and paste anything from the Internet.
• Your Wiki Project will be available for others to read and use (including the next class of HTM3121)
• You can use Turnitin to ensure your project is your original work and is not plagiarised or copied from anywhere.
• If your Group project is found to be plagiarised or copied from the Internet, your team will be penalized and lose marks. So please ensure that none of your team members produces any 'copied' work.

SUGGESTED TABLE OF CONTENT FOR THE PROJECT REPORT

You need to covert your Wiki Project into a printed report for submission. The report should be type-written in 12-point font and 1.5 line-spaced. It should not exceed 20 pages (approximately 5,000 words). The report should be properly referenced by using APA format. You should include a cover page indicating the name and student ID number of all group members, date of your presentation, and the title of your project. The report should be numbered. Your report should be printed and stapled on the top left corner with the cover page on top. If you choose to bind the report, please use ring-binding on the left hand side of the document. Please DO NOT put your report into clear plastic folder.

The following are the suggested content and organization for your report:

1)Executive summary: This is a one-page document summarizing the study, the theories being applied, and a highlight of the important findings. [THIS NEEDS TO BE DISTRIBUTED TO OTHER STUDENTS AND YOUR TUTOR DURING THE DAY OF YOUR PRESENTATION. PLEASE MAKE ENOUGH COPIES FOR DISTRIBUTION.]

2)Introduction: This section provides background information about the project and specifically describes the objectives of the study.

3)Theoretical background: This section presents the theoretical background of your study by summarizing results previous studies on the particular topic understudy. What are the similarities and differences of the results of those studies? How are they related to your study?

4)Methodology: This section describes how the study was being conducted and what was being studied. This may include information about the research approach adopted, population and sample of your study, instrument you used to collect the data, data collection method, and the data analysis methods. Limitation of the study should also be acknowledged.

5)Findings: This section will allow you to present the results of your study. You can make use of tables, charts, and diagrams, etc. to illustrate the results.

6)Discussion and conclusions: Based on the findings of your study, discuss their relationships with similar previous studies and the managerial implications. Provide recommendations for marketers and managers. Make sure the recommendations are relevant and supported by the results of your study.

7)Reference: Provide the list of references you have used in this study.

8)Appendix: This section includes relevant supporting material such as questionnaire you used in the study, photographs of the location of your study, etc., newspaper cuttings related to the topic of study, etc.

Working with your team

From PolyU Learn to Learn Guidelines [1]

1. Set ground rules

Examples:

• Be on time in each meeting
• All members share in team work
• Offer suggestions rather than criticisms

It is important that the group members agreed on the following:

• What ground rules are necessary?
• Why ground rules are important?
• When ground rules are applied?
• How ground rules are carried out?

2. Defining responsibilities

Examples:

• The leader has to make sure that ground rules are enforced
• The recorder has to record ideas in discussions

Assignment of responsibilities should be based on skills and expertise of members

3. Managing process

Examples:

• How well is each group member doing his/her role?
• How well is the interpersonal relationship?
• How well is the group working together as a whole?

You will find it very helpful to review the group process regularly, e.g. every two week or every month

All group members should participate in the review

/Peer assessment/

Why are we asking you to do your own assessment?

• To deepen your learning experiences by helping you to evaluate and assess your own work and the work of others
• To give you a deeper understanding of SHTM assessment processes, in particular Criterion-Referenced Assessment
• To help you become a more independent learner by developing the skills of reflection, evaluation, review and assessment
• To help you develop Management skills, as evaluation and assessment are an important part of the manager's skillset
• To help you gain much more feedback than would otherwise be possible from just your class tutor.

In many disciplines, student numbers have grown, and with large class sizes tutors are hard-pressed to maintain the quality and quantity of feedback which they once used to give to students about their tutor-assessed work. While feedback from fellow-students may not be as authoritative as from an expert tutor, there is much to be gained by having a lot more feedback. When a large amount of peer feedback is combined with a restricted amount of tutor feedback, students can benefit from both quality and quantity.

HOW SHOULD YOU PEER-ASSESS OTHERS?

Here are the assessment criteria:

A. Assessment of project by tutorial group and by tutor

Your tutorial group and tutor will assess your project using the following criteria:

• Very well-organized - with a clear structure, headings, logical arrangement and cohesive.
• Extensively covering the issues, and a thorough discussion of the issues
• You should apply the concepts successfully in solving a real-work problem and try and use examples to illustrate your arguments and ideas.
• Your conclusions or recommendation should be very clear and well-supported by factual arguments.

B. Assessment by team members of individual members’ contributions

You will assess your team members using the following criteria:

• How well your team members initiated tasks and produced new ideas
• How well your Team members helped other team members when asked, listened to others’ ideas, checked with others and offered help if needed.
• How well your team members were prepared to work, met deadlines for tasks, and worked hard.
• How well your Team member was willing to make up for work others didn’t do and to spend extra time to complete the project.

YOU NEED TO SUBMIT YOUR PEER ASSESSMENT REPORT TOGETHER WITH YOUR WRITTEN REPORT. PLEASE REFER TO YOUR SCHEME OF WORK FOR THE ASSESSMENT FORM.

/GROUP 1: Attitudes towards visiting Hong Kong – application of the Theory of Reasoned Action/

Introduction

1.1 Background

Hong Kong has experienced a dramatic growth of international visitors in recent years. According to Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) total visitor arrivals were 25.2 million in 2006, in 2007 the number had reached 28.2 million, the total visitor arrivals in 2007 experienced 11.6% increase from 2006 (HKTB, 2007). Thus, tourism industry is very important to Hong Kong, it is one out of four key industries in Hong Kong economy contributed approximately 3.2% of total GDP (Census and Statistic Department, 2006).

Tourist behavior keeps on changing by various attributes such as motivation, past experience and attitude. Understand that behavior is determined by the individual’s intention to act, which in turn is determined by the individual’s attitude towards the behavior and his or her subjective norm (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). When apply this theory to tourism industry, tourist’s attitude towards the behavior and subjective norm is important for their revisit intention. Therefore, this study aimed to examine inbound tourist revisit intention to Hong Kong and to investigate how attitude toward visiting Hong Kong and subjective norm influence their revisit intention.

1.2 Problem Statement

Repeat visitation is essential for most destinations since it represents an attractive, cost-effective market segment. In 2005, 85% of total visitors intended to revisit Hong Kong again in future, the proportion changed to 90% in 2007 (HKTB, 2007). According to Lau and McKercher (2004), repeat visitors not only represent source of revenue but also act as information channels that unsurprisingly link network of friends, relatives and other potential travelers to a destination. This showed that repeat visitors play an essential role in the development of Hong Kong’s tourism industry. Therefore, it is significant to study the attitude of travelers towards Hong Kong and their revisit intention. Failure in understanding visitors attitude and revisit intention would resulted in deciding inappropriate marketing strategy for destination which would have a consequence of wasting of resources and time for Hong Kong tourism development.

1.3 Objectives:

1) To investigate traveler’s attitude towards visiting Hong Kong by applying the Theory of Reasoned Action Model

2) To identify the similarity and differences of tourist attitudes and how they are formed

3) To compare the important of traveler’s attitude with the influence of significant others on their revisit intention

4) To provide insight to destination marketer and tourism service provider based on findings

Literature Review

In order to have a deep investigation of tourists’ attitudes towards visiting Hong Kong, the Theory of Reasoned Action model has been applied and tested. This model is used to show tourists’ attitudes, possible external influences, and the relationship with behavioral intentions and behaviors. Besides, the Theory of Planned Behavior model is a similar model but added the variable of perceived behavioral control in an effort to predict intentions and behaviors (Albarracin, Johnson, Fishbein & Muellerleile, 2001). In the following, these two models will be discussed.

2.1 Theory of Reasoned Action

The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) was developed to predict and understand individual behavior in a social context (Yu & Wu, 2007). TRA is a well-established general theory of social psychology which asserts that specific beliefs influence behavioural perceptions and actual behavior (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). According to TRA, behavior intention is the immediate antecedent of an individual’s execution or carrying-out of a piece of behavior (Yu & Wu, 2007). Besides, TRA specifies that behavioural intention is a function of two determinants: a personal factor termed “attitude toward the behaviour” and a person’s perception of social pressures, termed “subjective norm” (Yu & Wu, 2007).

Attitudes are made up of the beliefs that a person accumulates over his lifetime. Some beliefs are formed from direct experience, some are from outside information and others are inferred or self generated. However, only a few of these beliefs actually work to influence attitude. These beliefs are called salient beliefs and they are said to be the "immediate determinants of a person's attitude" (Ajzen & Fishbein 1980). Moreover, an attitude is a person’s salient belief about whether the outcome of his action will be positive or negative. If the person has positive salient beliefs about the outcome of his behavior then he is said to have a positive attitude about the behavior and vice versa.

Furthermore, subjective norms are beliefs of what others will think about the behaviour. It is the perception that important others think that one should or should not perform the behavior in question and is typically measured by items such as “People who are important to me” (Yu & Wu, 2007). Besides, it is important to note that subjective norms are formed only in relation to the opinions of persons considered to be significant or important.

However, the TRA has some limitations. For example, the greatest limitation of the theory is from the assumption that behavior is under volitional control (Taylor, 2001). The theory only applies to behavior that is consciously thought out before hand. The irrational decisions, habitual actions or any behavior that is not consciously considered cannot be explained by this theory (Taylor, 2001). Moreover, to overcome the problems aroused by the theory, Ajzen proposed the Theory of Planned Behaviour.

2.2 Theory of Planned Behavior

Theory of reasoned action was criticized to be too narrow; since most behaviors are not voluntary (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993). Thus, the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is an extension of Ajzen and Fishbein’s TRA. Its main goals are the prediction and understanding of human behavior (Huh, Kim & Law, 2008). This theory is the same with TRA except for the addition of the Perceived Behavioral Control component. Perceived Behavioral Control refers to one’s perception of control over the behavior and people's perceptions of their ability to perform a given behavior. Also, it reflects an individual’s perception of internal and external constraints on behavior (Ajzen, 1991). With the inclusion of this new factor, TPB proposes that perceived behavioral control can influence behavior directly (Albarracin et. al., 2001). Furthermore, people with higher perceived control are more likely to form intentions to perform a particular action (Albarracin et. al., 2001).

Attitude towards visiting Hong Kong

Overall speaking, all respondents possess positive attitude towards visiting Hong Kong, mostly because of the convenience transportation system and friendly attitude of Hong Kong people, however, some of them also has negative attitude towards Hong Kong as a travel destination, and the main reason are serious air pollution and overcrowding.

4.1 Similarities and differences of attitude towards visiting Hong Kong

Although all respondents show their positive attitude, similarities and difference can also be found from what aspects makes them has such positive attitude.

i. Convenience transportation When asking about what they like about Hong Kong as a travel destination, except respondent F, rest of respondents expressed their feeling that transportation system in Hong Kong is very convenient, make them easily to reach to the place they want to go. For example, as suggested by respondent A and D

        “…I can get to most of the tourist spots by public transportation…”
        “…it’s easy to get around in HK by using different means of transport…”

Respondent B and C further explained why they think transportation in Hong Kong is convenient.

        “…Every Where I go I can travel by MTR, Its connection is very convenience…”
        “…convenient to get around with taxis and subways….”

A destination with convenience transportation is very important to tourist since they have no or little knowledge about a new destination, convenience transportation helps them to get to a place they want to go easily. Beside, convenience transportation also means that attractions in a destination are highly accessible which means help they to save time and go to more places they want to go, at a result, positive image of destination will be developed. The answer of respondents shows that they are satisfy with the transportation and therefore also implicate them developed positive image towards Hong Kong as a travel destination.

ii. Friendly local people Apart from convenience transportation, the friendliness of Hong Kong people towards tourist also is appreciated by respondent B, C, D and H. For example, as suggested by respondent D and H

       “…people here are nice and friendly. They will help you when you need help…”
       “…local people and they have kindly told me that they are willing to help me…”

Respondent B and C also suggested why they think Hong Kong people are nice to them

        “…Hong Kong people are good in communication in English… “
        “…a lot of people could speak English…”

As discussed before, tourist has no or little knowledge about a new destination, information provided by local residents is very important to them. On the other hand, the process of tourist asking information to local people and local resident deliver information to tourist means that there are interaction between tourist and local resident, according to King and Jago (no date), this interaction is able to enhance tourist travel experience and therefore produce positive image. From the respondents’ answer, since they think Hong Kong willing to offer help to tourist and even can use English to interact with tourist, then positive image towards Hong Kong produced.

iii. Variety in shopping and dining Among all respondents, A, C, D, E and H shows their agreement in Hong Kong having great variety in shopping and dining, like what respondent A said

       “…I have tried out different kinds of food, not only Chinese food but Asian such as Thai, Indian food and I have tried Western food here.”

Respondent D also expressed her positive feeling about shopping in Hong Kong

       “…I can buy things easily because there are shops everywhere…”

Indeed, although diversify in tourism product is very important for the sustainability of Hong Kong tourism to compete with destinations nearby like Macau, Hong Kong is still a shopping and dining paradise for many tourist. From the report of Audit Commission released in 2007, in order to retain the position of shopping and dining paradise, HKTB spent over HKD23 million for Shopping Festival in 2006.To attract more tourist to shop and dine in Hong Kong, HKTB already did very well in terms of promotion and other affiliate policy like Quality Tourism Service Scheme also being implemented for a long time. Great choice of shopping and dining and quality assurance policy not only shows Hong Kong is a multicultural and reliable city, but also create positive image towards HK as a travel destination by tourist.

Although all respondents show their positive attitude towards Hong Kong as a travel destination, negative attitude also held by some respondents simultaneously and their suggestions are quite different.

i. Serious air pollution When asking what they don’t like about Hong Kong as a travel destination, respondent B and H also shows their concern in the air quality of Hong Kong.

        “…it has been polluted comparing with other countries.’
        “…The air quality is poor from all the pollution…”

According to the survey conducted with tour guide by Friend of the Earth in 2006, 38% tour guide received comment from tourists that air pollution in Hong Kong is serious (Friend of the Earth, 2006). Many news reported that Hong Kong people feels air quality is poor, it’s not difficult to imagine tourist cannot take it. A campaign for improving air quality in Hong Kong ‘Action Blue Sky’ has been launched for 2 years since 2006, but respondents still have feeling of poor air quality, does it implicating Hong Kong still not done enough for improvement? And therefore respondents developed negative image in this aspect.

ii. Not nice to mainland Chinese tourist One of the respondents is come from mainland China, and she reported that she was treated impolitely by Hong Kong people.

       “…Not every person nice to the people from mainland China…”

Hong Kong is a multicultural city, but for mainland Chinese, it seems like not welcome by some of Hong Kong people, the respondent did not further explain how she was treated impolitely but if this is really a case, her answer is implicating there was a possibility for the respondent was discriminated by Hong Kong resident. Good interaction between tourist and local people can enhance tourist travel experience, but for bad interaction between them, it’s not difficult to guess the tourist will develop negative imagine towards a destination.

4.2 The formation of tourist attitude towards Hong Kong as a travel destination

According to the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), attitude towards the behaviour is base on consumers’ beliefs about the consequence engaging in the behaviour and the consumer’s evaluation of these consequences. When applying in the question of whether respondents visit Hong Kong or not, it means that their impression about Hong Kong before they make a visit and what their expectation while traveling Hong Kong will create an attitude whether they will visit Hong Kong.

To investigate how respondents create their attitude towards visit Hong Kong, first of all, analysis of whether they have positive or negative impression before they visit Hong Kong will be conducted.

i. Positive impression (belief) about Hong Kong When asking about their impression about Hong Kong before they make a visit, among 8 respondents, 3 respondents was impressed by Hong Kong is a shopping paradise, 6 respondents reported that they think Hong Kong is an international, lively and multicultural city and also 2 of them recognized the beautiful night view of Victoria Harbour.

Answers of respondent shows that their impression of Hong Kong is mainly comes from what they can see and play in Hong Kong, which match with the promotional tactic of HKTB, also, all their impression about Hong Kong is positive, which create a favorable condition for develop a positive attitude with their evaluation of expected outcome while traveling Hong Kong which will discuss about in the next.

ii. Expectation on travel to Hong Kong Regarding what they expect to do when travel to Hong Kong, 4 respondents expressed they want to do shopping here, 3 of them want to go Disneyland, 5 respondents shows they want to know more local culture and make local friends and 2 of them want to enjoy great variety of cuisine in Hong Kong.

From their response, what they expect to do is quite similar with their impression about Hong Kong and what they expect will be seen in Hong Kong are also positive. However, since ‘attitude’ in TRA model not only formed by tourist belief and their evaluation of outcome while traveling Hong Kong, but the ‘attitude’ itself also consist the meaning of cognition which means their experience also affect their attitude towards visiting Hong Kong as well. Since all respondents reported that their expectation has been met and they all also has positive image about Hong Kong as a travel destination as discussed in first part, together with their positive belief and positive expectation, therefore, base on the TRA model, it can be concluded that all respondents has positive attitude towards visiting Hong Kong.

Subjective norms

Subjective norms mean a group of people which is important to you, such as friends and family. Subjective norms whether is important or not is determined by is there any significant other, and how much and how important that people listened to their subjective norms opinions and whether it motivated them to took their referents’ opinions into consideration.

According to the interview result, subjective norms play an important role in the decision making and planning process. Among 8 interviewees, 5 of them showed subjective norms were important, 1 said very important, 1 though quite important and only 1 said no influence. For the interviewee said no influence, she will come to Hong Kong no mater her friend will come here or not, so her plan to Hong Kong was not influenced by anyone. For the interviewee said significant other was quite important, she also listened to her significant others’ opinions, but she was the one to motivate her significant other to come to Hong Kong.

Regarding to the interviewees said important, they will listen to their subjective norms and took their opinions into consideration when planning the trip. For some interviewees, they had friends and relative lives in Hong Kong, so they asked their advice and even their subjective norms plan the itinerary for them.

Moreover for the influences in future revisit intention, all the interviewees revealed they will come to Hong Kong again. However only 3 of interviewees showed that they will come to Hong Kong because of subjective norms or they will put the subjective norms under consideration when planning revisits Hong Kong. 2 of the them said they will come to Hong Kong again but need to see whether their boyfriend have time to go later and 1 interviewee said she will come to Hong Kong to visit her friend. The rest of the interviewees will come to Hong Kong again based on they have positive attitude and not influenced by significant others.

Subjective norms also play an important role in the future revisit intention, however based on the result, attitude is more important than significant others. Therefore, it can conclude that, revisit intervention is because interviewees has positive attitude and subjective norms weighted little influence.

Theory of planned behavior

When asking whether they will revisit Hong Kong again, all respondents show they have this intention as discussed in part 4, however, their intention not only affected by their attitude towards Hong Kong and subjective norm , there are also other factor influence their intention that Theory of Reasoned Action model (TRA) could not fully explain. Like what respondent H said

        “…I’m already 70 years old, I don’t know whether I’m physically capable to visit Hong Kong again.”   

Respondent H’s concern is his physical condition constraint which obviously out of the influence of attitude and subjective norm, in order to offset the narrowness of TRA for only measure one’s attitude and subjective norm, then Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) was applied to illustrate respondent H revisit intention and his health concern could be classified as ‘perceived behavioural control’.

Implications

After knowing that traveler’s attitudes towards visiting Hong Kong play more important role in revisit intention than significant others, the majority of the implications applied in this chapter would mainly focused on how destination marketers reinforce positive attitude and how negative attitudes could be improved. It would be more reasonable for destination marketers to create positive attitudes by enhancing visitor’s impression and meeting their expectation. Therefore, the implications below mostly would be related to impression creation and enhancing visitor’s actual experience.

7.1 Comprehensive guidebook of 18 Districts

With reference to the result of the interviews and findings, nearly all the respondents stated that they enjoyed shopping and food in Hong Kong. Actually, Hong Kong is famous for its shopping and gourmet paradise. Many tourists are attracted to visit Hong Kong mainly for shopping and enjoying the food in Hong Kong. Therefore, it is suggested that Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) should strengthen the existing superiority of Hong Kong and cooperate with different local parties like District Council to promote the dynamic images of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong should promote its dynamic images. Since there are attractions, shopping center and traditional as well as international food in different parts of Hong Kong, HKTB can cooperate with the 18 Districts Council to do promotion. Recently, some of the districts are finding their own unique attractions and food stores to do promotion to tourists as well as locals by themselves. They formulated a guide book including all the attractions and traditional and local food of the particular district. It is successfully implemented by providing a useful guide to tourists and locals to explore the unique things in different parts of Hong Kong.

Therefore, it is suggested that HKTB can cooperate with the 18 Districts Council by adopting the concept which some districts are currently using. Each district should find its own unique and distinct attractions, shops and food stores and input into the guide. After summarizing all 18 districts information, the booklet can provide a comprehensive guide for tourists to explore different parts of Hong Kong. As a result, tourists may not only visit the main tourist spots in Hong Kong like Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay etc. They can really experience the local culture. Also, the guide book can suggest the traveling methods in order to teach people how to reach certain places. It can be another way for tourists to explore and experience different traveling experience in Hong Kong too.

7.2 Enhance eco-tourism in Hong Kong

Based in the findings, most of respondent mentioned that Hong Kong is quite polluted comparing with other destinations. This problem might be out of destination marketer’s hands as it needs the public contribution and government’s action. However, this could be done by improving the negative image of Hong Kong in term of air pollution in order to enhance visitor’s impression about Hong Kong. At the same time this could change the basic motivational function of tourist as Hong Kong has only been seen as a famous metropolitan city and its major attractions are commonly shopping and dining. This could be done by delivering messages to tourist that there were a numerous of interest and a vast of eco-tourism-based activities developed and organized in Hong Kong.

Hawkins (1994) mentioned that the main factors contributing to the boom in eco-tourism included an international consciousness of global ecological realities, the desire among a rapid growing and relatively affluent segment of the industrialized world’s tourist to have nature-based experience, and the developing world’s conviction that natural resources are finite and must be conserved for future generations. HKTB should take a consideration in promoting eco-tourism seriously in order to reduce the image of serious air pollution in Hong Kong and on another hand diversify its tourism products. Corporations of government with local tour operators and oversea travel agents could be made to organize extensive itinerary related to eco-tourism. Moreover, education can be another way to support eco-tourism by providing more guidance to travel agents and environmental organizations. For example, a comprehensive and compulsory training course can be provided to train and develop professional eco-tour guide who are seriously lack of in Hong Kong. As a result tourist may find more confident and value for money in joining ecotours in Hong Kong.

7.3 Strengthen cultural learning activities promotion

Lee and Pearce (2002) stated that people with high travel experience level gave more emphasis to motivations such as self-development through host-site involvement and nature seeking. Whereas people with less travel experience stressed other factors namely stimulation, romance, nostalgia, security, recognition, self-actualization and personal development (Lee and Pearce, 2002). Therefore, people have less travel experience will be more likely to join all-inclusive package, itineraries includes sight-seeing with shopping and dinning probably could fulfill their needs and wants. However, as more and more people traveling nowadays and increasing travel experience. Mr. Steve Huen, executive director of EGL Tours Company limited stated that traveling become a necessity instead of luxury goods (Career times, 2008). Also in order to attract tourists revisit Hong Kong, it is not strong enough only selling Hong Kong as a shopping and gourmet paradise and it might no longer cater their needs and wants.

In regard to the interview result, it was found that majority of the interviewees visit Hong Kong because they think Hong Kong is a multi-cultural city so they would like to explore and experience the culture. As high travel experience tourists would like to have host-site involvement. Participate in local events and festivals, providing learning experience such as simple cooking class, tea culture class could be appealing to the high travel experience travelers.

According to Hong Kong Tourism Board, they actually do provide cooking class, Feng Shui class and Tai Chi class etc., to the tourists. However it is not well promoted, tourists might not know about it or they need to have some research to find it out. It is suggested that Hong Kong Tourism Board would strengthen this kind of promotion, not just promoting Hong Kong is a Shopping and gourmet paradise, tourists would also have a cultural learning experience as well.

Conclusion

To sum up, the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) is appropriate and could be applied in hospitality industry. With reference to the result, subjective norms play an important role in decision making and planning process. Also, it showed that visitors’ future revisit intentions are mainly based on whether they have positive or negative attitudes, subjective norms have relatively less influence. Furthermore, the result of this finding is matched with the previous studies discussing that intention is driven by attitudes to a greater extent than by subjective norms (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993).

However, TRA has limitations that it is from the assumption that behavior is under volitional control which means attitudes and subjective norms are not enough to explain the individual behavior and there maybe other factors will affect the behavior as well. Therefore, the Theory of Planned Behavior was developed.

According to the result, similar reasons to visit Hong Kong and both positive and negative attitudes toward traveling to Hong Kong were identified. Positive attitudes including they enjoyed shopping and dining in Hong Kong. Whereas negative attitudes consist of air pollution and overcrowded. Consequently, implications and recommendations were drawn out to enhance positive attitudes and reduce negative attitudes. The implications consist of enhancing eco-tourism, strengthen the promotion on cultural learning activities and develop a comprehensive guidebook for tourists.

Finally, it is hoped that findings and implications will give some insights to the tourism marketers to develop Hong Kong as a preferred destination.

References

Ajzen, I. and Fishbein, M.(1980), Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Social Behavior, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,Inc.

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 50 (2), 179-211.

Albarracin, D. Johnson, B. T. Fishbein, M. & Muellerleile, P. A. (2001). Theories of Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior as Models of Condom Use: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Personality, 127 (1), 142-161.

Audit Commission ( 2007 ). Hong Kong Tourism Board: Planning, execution and evaluation of marketing activities. HongKong: Audit Commission

Census and Statistic Department. (2006). The Four Key Industries in the Hong Kong Economy. Retrieved Nov 25, 2008, from the World Wide Web: http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hong_kong_statistics/four_key_industries/index.jsp

Eagly, A.H., and Chaiken, S., (1993). The psychology of attitudes. Harcourt Brace and company, Orlando.

Friend of the Earth (2006). Air pollution harming tourism, poll warns. Retrieved 15 October 2008 from World Wide Web : http://www.ecotourism.org.hk/other%20files/News/Tourism_pollution.htm

Hawkins, D. (1994). Ecotourism: opportunities for developing countries. In Theoblad, W. (Ed.), Global Tourism: The Next Decade (pp.261-273). Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Hong Kong Tourism Board. (2008). Cooking class. Retrieved 15 October 2008 from the World Wide Web: http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/touring/experiences/ta_expe_138498.jhtml

Hong Kong Tourism Board. (2007). Hong Kong Tourism Statistics in Brief 2007. Retrieved Nov 25, 2008, from the World Wide Web: http://partnernet.hktb.com/pnweb/jsp/comm/index.jsp?pageContent=%2Fjsp%2Frso%2Frso_pub.jsp&charset=en&rso_cat_id=3633&rso_doc_sort=from_date+desc#3633

Huh, H. J. Kim, T. & Law, R. (2008). A comparison of competing theoretical models for understanding acceptance behavior of information systems in upscale hotels. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 28 121-134.

King, B & Jago, L (no date). A Tale of Two Cities : Urban Tourism Development and Major Events in Australia. Centre for Hospitality and Tourism Research. Victoria University.

Lau, A.L.S., & McKercher, B. (2004) Exploratory versus acquisition: A comparison of first-time and repeat visitors. Journal of Travel Research, 42(3), 279-285.

Lee, U-I. & Pearce, P. L. (2002). Travel motivation and travel career patterns. In Proceedings of First Asia Pacific Forum for Graduate Students Research in Tourism, 22 May, Macao (pp. 17-35). Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Ocean of opportunities. (2008). Career times, February 15. Taylor, B. (2001). The Theory of Reasoned Action. Retrieved November 26, 2008 from http://www.ciadvertising.org/student_account/fall_01/adv382j/brent/yes.html

Yu, T. K. & Wu, G. S. (2007). Determinants of Internet Shopping Behavior: An Application of Reasoned Behaviour Theory. International Journal of Management, 24 (4), 744-764.