Visitor Motivational Factors and Level of Satisfaction in Wellness Tourism: Comparison Between First-Time Visitors and Repeat Visitors

This study aims to examine the differences between visitor motivations and satisfaction between first-time visitors and return visitors to a recreation wellness tourist attraction site in South Korea. Data were collected using a questionnaire at a national arboretum and 573 samples were used for analysis. The study discovered that first-time visitor motivations were composed of four factors: “relaxation and rest”, “novelty”, “self-exploration”, and “accessibility”. The return visitor motivations were “sightseeing and experience”, “convenience for touring”, “self-exploration”, and “accessibility”. The desired outcomes motivating the visitation and level of satisfaction were different between first-time and return visitors. The results contribute practical information to managers and marketers not only of the arboretum, but also of wellness tourist attractions to improve strategic visitor management in Korea and beyond. The study strategically applies the arboretum as a competitive resource in a wellness tourism industry with strategic segmentation of visitors.     

Marketing expense and financial performance in arts and cultural organizations

Nonprofit arts and cultural organizations use marketing to sustain viability. This study uses data from the Cultural Data Project to examine the effects of marketing on revenue in arts and cultural organizations. The current analysis demonstrates that total marketing expense is positively related to total revenue. Marketing expense used for fund‐raising positively influences donation income, as intended, whereas commercial income is not affected. Alternatively, marketing expense for programs positively influences both commercial income, as intended, and donation income. The novel finding from this study is that marketing expense mainly targeting non‐donor ticket buyers not only increases commercial income but also augments donation income in arts and cultural organizations.     

Citizens’ e-participation on agenda setting in local governance: Do individual social capital and e-participation management matter?

Although a growing body of literature has touted e-participation as a means of facilitating greater citizen participation in policy decision-making processes, little is known about the driving forces behind citizens’ use of e-participation. Based on a literature review of social capital and citizen participation, this study develops and tests a model proposing that three dimensions of social capital and three dimensions of citizen participation management should be positively associated with e-participation in agenda setting. Using data from a Korean e-participation survey conducted in 2009, we found that citizens tend to be more active e-participants when they have greater trust in government and are weakly tied to offline social groups. We also found that citizen participants’ perception of government responsiveness to their input can facilitate their e-participation. The study findings imply that local governments should pay more attention to the function of public trust in local government and provide quality feedback in response to citizen input. They should also be sensitive to how the social factors of e-participants can facilitate involvement in agenda setting.     

Examining the influencing factors of intention to share accommodations in online hospitality exchange networks

ABSTRACT

CouchSurfing is a free social-network-based online hospitality exchange network, aptly representing a new sharing economy phenomenon. Based on social capital theory and previous literature, this study attempts to answer why hosts help strangers without any expected economic benefit within online hospitality exchange networks. An empirical study based on a Web survey conducted with CouchSurfing hosts reveals that the most identified antecedents (enjoy helping, shared narratives, desire to make friends, and reciprocity) are significantly related to hosts’ intention to share accommodations. Interestingly, the overshadowing effect of trust in CouchSurfing on the intention to share accommodations is also found.     

Examining the impact of experiential value on emotions,self-connective attachment,and brand loyalty in Korean family restaurants

ABSTRACT

This study examines how experiential value as perceived by customers of Korean family restaurants influences consumption emotions, self-connective attachment to the restaurant brand, and, ultimately, brand loyalty. Having conducted a comprehensive literature review, the study proposes and estimates a model that specifies the interrelationships among four dimensions of experiential value (i.e., atmosphere, escapism, customer return on investment, and service excellence), and latent variables of positive and negative emotions, self-connective attachment, and brand loyalty. Analysis with structural equation modeling was conducted with data collected from customers of family restaurants in South Korea. The results show that dimensions of experiential value influence either positive or negative emotions. The emotion variables, together with self-connective attachment, also mediate the relationships between perceived value of dining experience and brand loyalty.     

Achieving relational outcomes in casual dining restaurants through consumer commitment

The purpose of the study is to identify how we can achieve positive word-of-mouth (WOM) and share of purchases through consumer commitment in casual dining restaurants. This study proposes the theory of organizational commitment and the framework of the relationship development process as the theoretical foundation to identify the antecedents of consumer commitment (i.e. identification, switching costs, and satisfaction), and tests the role of consumer commitment between its antecedents and relational outcomes (i.e. share of purchases and positive WOM). The results of the study support that commitment plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between its antecedents and share of purchases. In addition, commitment exerts a full mediating role on the effects of identification and switching costs on positive WOM intentions, while it plays a partial mediating role between satisfaction and positive WOM intentions. Managerial implications are discussed to maximize delivering relational outcomes based on consumer commitment and its antecedents.     

Employee mobility,spin‐outs,and knowledge spill‐in: How incumbent firms can learn from new ventures

Research summary: We consider conditions in which incumbent firms are particularly poised to benefit from knowledge spilling in from new ventures that employ individuals previously employed by the focal incumbent firm. We distinguish between inventors who leave their incumbent employers to found spin‐outs and those who become non‐founding employees of existing new ventures. Using a sample of new ventures and incumbent firms in the U.S. information technology (IT) sector, we find that incumbents are more likely to benefit from patented knowledge that spills in from their spin‐outs than from new ventures that employ non‐founding inventors formerly employed by the respective incumbent. Any advantage that parent firms have in reaping such knowledge quickly dissipates, however, when these parents have a history of misappropriating the intellectual property of others. Managerial summary: It has long been acknowledged that new ventures can acquire valuable knowledge from their larger and more established counterparts by hiring away their talented employees. We consider the possibility of a reverse flow of knowledge where established firms learn from those new ventures that have poached employees from them. We find that established information technology (IT) firms are more likely to learn and build on the technology of their spin‐outs (i.e., new ventures founded by their former inventors) than from new ventures that simply employ non‐founding inventors formerly employed by the respective IT firm. Any advantage that these IT firms had in reaping technical know‐how from their spin‐outs quickly dissipated, however, when they had a history of misappropriating the intellectual property of others. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Promoting Tourism,Projecting Power: The Role of Television Commercials

This paper analyzes television commercials (TVCs) launched by Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) from 1999 to 2012. By repeating shots of traditional and Korean popular (k-pop) culture, high-tech machinery, and sportsmanship, it is fair to say that Korean tourism TVCs both reflected and fueled the fad a target audience has for Korea. Hence the commercials not only promoted tourism, they were also projecting national power in general and cultural power in particular. It is surmised that through power projection the TVCs intend to create a country halo effect so that the country’s products and services may enjoy an aspired added value.     

Non-financial hurdles for human capital accumulation: landownership in Korea under Japanese rule

This study examined the relationship between land inequality and human capital accumulation in the Korean colonial period by using a panel data set from 1934 to 1942. Evidence of the adverse relationship between land inequality and the accumulation of human capital has thus far only been presented by using data from Western countries and from countries that achieved industrialization not under colonial occupation but by their own economic interest. The presented findings thus contribute to the body of knowledge on this topic and confirm the generalizability of the Galor model by analyzing the unique Korean context under Japanese rule in the early twentieth century. It is the first study to present evidence that inequality in landownership had an adverse effect on the level of public education in the Korean colonial period (i.e., it is a non-financial hurdle for human capital accumulation). By using a fixed effects model and a fixed effects two-stage least squares model with an instrumental variable estimation, this study exploits variation in inequality in land concentration across regions in Korea, accounting for the unobserved heterogeneity across these regions. Overall, this analysis establishes a highly significant adverse effect of land inequality on education in the Korean colonial period.     

Construction and validation of a scale to measure tourist motivation to consume local food

Although the importance of the role of local food in tourism has begun to form an academic debate in the last decade, little effort has been invested in understanding what tourist motivations influence consumption of local food and beverages in a tourist destination and to develop a measurement scale for those motivations. Thus, this study adopted the comprehensive procedures of measurement scale development recommended by prior studies. The scale development procedure yielded a five factor measurement scale with acceptable levels of reliability and validity. Five underlying motivational dimensions of local food consumption were labelled: cultural experience; interpersonal relation; excitement; sensory appeal; and health concern. The outcomes and applications of the developed scale are discussed both in terms of theoretical and managerial implications.