The Impact of Cultural Proximity in the Relationship of Popular Media in the Case of Watching Korean Drama Series and Tourists’ Travel Motivations to South Korea

• Main Authors: Nerissa Jean Cruz, 蘇愛琪
• Other Authors: David Chang
• Format: Others
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/69602589928113495440

碩士 === 國立嘉義大學 === 全英文授課觀光暨管理碩士學位學程 === 101 === In this day and age, tourism industry is relying on media to promote tourist destinations. As films shown in the big screen, viewers cannot help but notice the beautiful scenery used as a film setting. This unintentional marketing gave rise to film-induced tourism. Not long after that, the small screen came in the center stage. Television-induced tourism is seen to have stronger effects than the first. The unforeseen reason to how television drama series pull viewers to travel led the researcher to this study. This study empirically examined the relationship between the television drama series and the tourist’s travel motivations to South Korea, specifically, looking into the moderating effect of cultural proximity in this relationship. A sample population was obtained in Metro Manila area through convenient sampling. A total of 399 responses were usable from the 410 questionnaires collected. Structural Equation Modeling was deployed in studying the data together with other statistical techniques such as independent sample t-test and bivariate correlation. The results showed that television drama series have influence on tourist’s travel motivation. On the other hand, cultural proximity neither has a moderating effect on the relationship of the two constructs nor an effect on the tourist travel motivation considering that television drama series is present. Although, results show that cultural proximity has some moderating effect on travel motivations. Furthermore, the researcher found out that between groups having high and low level perception of cultural proximity, there is a significant difference between their effect on travel motivation, apparently, high level perception of cultural proximity results to higher travel motivation and vice versa. The work also found out that there is a correlation between the frequency of watching TV drama series and travel motivations. Pragmatic implications are discussed at the end of the study.