A cross-cultural study of on-site film-tourism experiences among Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and Thai visitors to the Daejanggeum Theme Park, South Korea

Abstract

There has been a growing research interest in the film-tourism phenomenon and its associated film tourist motivations, expectations and experiences at filmed locations of popular media programmes, in particular, in film and television series. However, with some exceptions, research into non-Anglophone linguistic and cultural settings remains relatively unexplored. There is also a lack of cross-cultural studies of film tourists’ experience in this research area. This current study addresses this gap and contributes to the existing film-tourism literature by examining the impact of nationality on film tourists’ actual experiences. The study looks at those experiences at filmed locations associated with Daejanggeum, a Korean historical television drama in the inter-Asian context. Adopting a structured survey questionnaire, the primary research data were collected at the Daejanggeum Theme Park (the main filming location of Daejanggeum in South Korea) among international visitors mainly from China, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand. Exploratory factor analysis identifies three salient dimensions to the film-tourism experiences, namely, ‘novelty and prestige’, ‘beyond screen experiences and re-enactment’, and ‘intimacy and memory’. In addition, it is empirically suggested that nationality does affect film tourist's on-site experiences. These findings provide important implications for destination marketers in relation to film-tourism destination development and experience design and management.