社会交往、旅游情境对旅游需求的影响研究--基于春节“黄金周”的实证分析

以往关于消费者需求行为的研究多基于传统经济学框架的设定展开，认为影响消费者旅游需求的主要因素包含收入、目的地吸引力、交通等，普遍忽视了消费过程中的社会交往和具体情境。文章在理论分析的基础上，提出了若干命题，将消费者收入、社会交往和旅游情境等因素纳入旅游消费者需求的模型中，提出了若干研究命题。依据2014年春节“黄金周”旅游需求调研数据，采用排序选择模型验证了相关命题的正确性。计量结果表明，个人经济因素对我国消费者春节“黄金周”旅游需求影响较小，家庭结构、同伴等社会交往因素是影响其旅游需求的重要因素；我国消费者对于春节“黄金周”出游过程中遭遇的拥堵、旅游市场混乱等旅游情境问题具有一定的容忍度，但是，严重供需失衡导致的旅游情境问题依然对其旅游需求产生了显著的影响。

The Effect of Social Interaction and Tourism Scenario on Tourism Demand:Empirical Research Based on Spring Festival Golden Week

As a branch of economics, consumer economics is a broad field, principally concerning the microeconomic analysis of behavior in terms of consumers, families, or individuals. Consumer economics sometimes encompasses tourism demand and its influencing factors. However, conventional economic research of tourism demand has shown little interest in analyzing tourism demand based on tourism properties and characteristics—especially from a Chinese cultural perspective. Conventional economic consumer theory is insufficient to explain the phenomenon of tourism demand, whereby tourists obtain utility from social interaction and the tourism scenario.
Regarding the influencing factors of consumer tourism demand identified in related academic sources, the most used explanatory variables are the following:tourists’regular income;tourism prices at a destination compared with those at home;tourism prices in competing destinations (i.e., substitute prices);and exchange rates. These factors are also the most important determinants of tourism demand. The explanatory variables included in previous tourism demand models have varied enormously according to the researcher’s objectives and background. In addition to such conventional factors as personal income, prominent variables used to explain consumer tourism demand are related to social interaction and tourism scenario, for example, travel companions, traffic congestion, and type of tourist attraction.
In this paper, the theoretical cornerstone is Becker’s social interaction theory. That illustrates how consumers maximize their tourism utility subject to constraints on their social income. In the framework of this paper, we introduce the factors of social interaction and tourism scenario: we emphasize the effect of those two factors on tourism demand. We then provide a number of hypotheses based on theoretical analysis. These hypotheses state that tourism demand falls as the importance of social interaction rises—even when the consumer is monetarily compensated for the effect of higher prices. Further, as the tourism scenario deteriorates, tourism demand will decrease, shifting the demand curve lower at all possible prices.
Golden Week has become an important phenomenon in China and is an excellent case for discussion and research. Since its establishment on October 1, 1999, the Golden Week holiday system has signi fi cantly boosted domestic demand, stimulated consumption, and promoted large-scale economic growth. It has also produced a major expansion in long-distance travel. However, there is evidence that this holiday system has led to many social problems, which pose obstacles for sustainable tourism development. Many experts have concluded that China’s existing holiday policies need to be reformed, and the Golden Week holiday system has emerged as the most urgent priority.
Previous tourism demand modeling and forecasting research has relied heavily on secondary data in terms of model construction and estimation. In this paper, we conducted a questionnaire survey on tourism demand during Spring Festival Golden Week in 2014 and obtained firsthand data. Econometric analysis has empirical usefulness in interpreting tourism demand from an economist’s perspective;it is able to support policy recommendations and evaluate the effectiveness of existing tourism policies. In this paper, we place particular emphasis on empirical tests of the hypotheses we developed about tourism demand. The econometric technique we employed is the ordered choice model. We discuss our empirical method together with our empirical findings.
We found that individual economic factors had a slight impact on tourism demand in Spring Festival Golden Week; however, such social interaction factors as family structure and appropriate companions significantly affected tourism demand. We observed that although tourists may tolerate traffic congestion and market chaos, a serious imbalance between supply and demand and related issues had a remarkable effect on tourism demand in Spring Festival Golden Week. These findings verify our initial hypotheses presented in the theoretical framework.
This study demonstrates the usefulness of frame analysis to describe, analyze, and explain the dynamics of tourism demand in terms of both social interaction and tourism scenario. We found theoretical analysis based on social interaction to be a viable approach for examining tourism demand, thereby adding a new research direction to the existing literature. Based on a detailed analysis of these findings, this paper provides policy suggestions.