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The purpose of this study was to analyze the differences of pro-environmental tourism behavior intentions under control conditions of tourists’ psychological distance and problem awareness of climate change. As a result, there was a significant interactive effect between temporal distance, social distance, and problem awareness of climate change. In the group with a low level of problem awareness of climate change, pro-environmental tourism behavior intentions was highest when temporal distance to the message was far, and social distance was far as well. However, in the group with a high level of problem awareness of climate change, pro-environmental tourism behavior intentions was highest when temporal distance to the message was far, but social distance was close. Therefore, messages should be presented in different ways according to the level of problem awareness of climate change. Messages focused on the desirability of “what to do” to reduce the problem of climate change for human beings in the future should be given to the group with a low level of problem awareness of climate change, while messages focused on the feasibility of “how to do” to reduce the problem of climate change in the future should be given to the group with a high level of problem awareness of climate change.

The purpose of this study was to explore how museum visitors as leisure participants signify their leisure experiences and how the meanings of their visits evolve from the interpretivist perspective. Participants were those who, after appreciating the “FANTasia: East Asia Feminism” exhibition at the Seoul Museum of Art, perceived the exhibition primarily attuned to delivering educational messages to them. The data obtained through unstructured multiple interviews were analyzed based on the “hermeneutic circle” methodology that emphasizes the connectivity between each participant’s narrative and that of the whole. Themes that emerged were “being panicked/being bored,” “being in the flow/being alienated,” and “self-expression/ self-denial,” which were mutually intertwined. The findings are discussed in terms of the lived meaning of subjectivity and the hermeneutic circle through which the interconnectivity among the three themes was understood.

As the experience economy through food tourism has increased, local governments have developed various food festivals to encourage local economies through food tourism. However, there is a lack of research to compare the perceptions of food tourism destinations. The purpose of this study is to examine the differences in Seoul residents’ perceptions according to their food involvement and how they perceive the metropolitan cities in Korea as food tourism sites. For this purpose, visualization of the perceptions was accomplished through positioning and surveying the perceptions of the six metropolitan cities. In addition, the differences between the perceptions of the six major metropolitan cities were verified and the perceptions differed among the high and low involvement groups according to food involvement. As a result of the analysis, Busan was found to be higher than the other metropolitan cities in food material recognition, food culture recognition, food recognition, and tourism resource recognition factors. Also, it was found that the group with high food involvement had a higher perception of food tourism sites than the group with low food involvement. This study suggests that government officials and local industries should cooperate to develop tourism products linked to food and to promote local food tourism by encouraging participation and revisitation of people with high food involvement.

This study was carried out to find out the autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which are self-determined psychological needs, on customer participation, brand commitment, and brand loyalty for customers using five-star hotel rooms in Korea. The survey was conducted from February 1 to February 10, 2018. A total of 353 copies were distributed online, and 301 copies were used for the empirical analysis. For the research analysis, SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 22.0 were used to carry out frequency analysis, descriptive statistical analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural model verification. According to the analyses results, self-determination factors consisted of three factors of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and they were found to have a positive (+) effect in relation to customer participation. Also, customer participation was found to have a positive (+) effect in relation to consumers' brand commitment and brand loyalty. Finally, brand commitment of customers using five-star hotel rooms was also found to have a positive (+) significant influence relationship with brand loyalty. With new marketing plans to increase the profits of hotel companies, this study provides meaningful implications for the industry and academia.

This study aimed to analyze the process of tourism public relations by applying grounded theory to university students who participated in SNS tourism public relations, which has been recognized as a new form of tourism volunteer activity. The literature reviewed major concepts and prior research. For this study, university student supporters in Changwon City were interviewed. As a result, 26 subcategories and 15 categories were derived from 86 concepts. The students did not realize that SNS tourism public relation activities were volunteer activities. However, by participating in activities they felt responsibility and pride through writing publicity posts. The final core category was “the understanding of localization and the value of tourism volunteer activities along with original personal goals.” This study provides an analysis and understanding of new phenomena and provides basic data for empirical research related to online tourism volunteer activities. Management directions for online tourism public relations volunteer activities are also discussed.

This study aims to investigate the structural relationship among social ties, trust, adoption, and intention in sharing travel information in social network sites (SNS). Four hypotheses were developed based on social capital theory in order to examine the travel information sharing model, which emphasizes structural social capital - bonding and bridging social capital - on SNS. The hypotheses were tested with a sample of 448 travelers who had used SNS for trip plans or sharing travel information. Partial least square (PLS) path modeling was employed to analyze collected data. The results suggested that bonding social capital (strong ties) positively affected all four trust factors while bridging social capital (weak ties) positively affected three trust factors, with the exception of integrity. Only two trust factors, competence and predictability, positively affected information adoption and intention to share travel information on SNS. The theoretical and practical implications for social media marketing are discussed.

The UNWTO’s IRTS 2008 is an international tourism statistics standard to compare the economic scale of the tourism industry and to understand the growth of the industry. IRTS 2008 prioritizes economic access based on tourism expenditure as a mediator between demand and supply for statistics of demand (tourists) and supply (tourism industry) statistics. In this study, we collected unstructured data describing tourists' “experiential activities as a method for typing tourists” changes through online data, and analyzed the accommodation services through association rule analysis. As a method to typify Korean portal blog data, a step-by-step approach through validity and feedback was found to be effective. IRTS 2008 showed that accommodation service can classify type as detailed accommodation by the experience of domestic tourists, and this type of supply is expanded to area, companion, and demand level in addition to facility.

Smart tourism, which results from the combination of tourism and information communication technology (ICT), is recognized as an important concept that includes tourist behavior, tourism ecosystems, and customer performance. This study investigates the antecedents affecting customer satisfaction with smart tourism, which have received considerable attention in recent years. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to explore the relationships between smart tourism information technology attributes (informativeness, accessibility, interactivity, and personalization), the perceived quality of tourism destination attributes (5A's), and tourist satisfaction with smart tourism. A survey was conducted to Seoul tourists who had experienced smart tourism using information technology. The results of the analysis show that the smart tourism information technology attributes had significant effects on the perceived quality of tourism destination attributes and tourist satisfaction with smart tourism. Based on this study, we examined the smart tourism information technology and smart destination attributes of Seoul as a smart tourism destination and tried to analyze the smart tourism competitiveness of major cities in the world.

This study examined the impact of tour guides' rapport-building behaviors on tourists’ positive emotions and how those emotions influence subsequent behaviors in three specific areas: self-enhancing word-of-mouth, decreased price consciousness, and tolerance to service failure. To do this, 322 online and offline surveys were collected from tourists who had taken guided tours with Korean travel agencies during the past five years. By examining prior studies, the rapport-building behaviors were classified into five factors; uncommonly attentive behavior, common grounding behavior, courteous behavior, connecting behavior, and information-sharing behavior. As a result of the study, uncommonly attentive behavior and courteous behavior positively influenced the tourists’ emotions, while common grounding behavior, connecting behavior, and information-sharing behavior had no effect. This study also confirmed that tourists’ positive emotions had a significant effect on both self-enhancing word-of-mouth, decreased price consciousness of tourists, and tolerance for future service failures.