Abstract
Given the rising Muslim travel market and the scarcity of research on Muslim inbound market, it is important to elucidate how international Muslim travelers are perceived through the lens of residents in non-Islamic countries. This study provided an insight into how value cocreation is created through emotional solidarity and attitudes in the context of the Muslim travel market. Results of the structural model for American residents were comparatively similar to those of their Korean counterparts, which is indicative of both countries’ acceptance and tolerance of international Muslim travelers. In particular, residents’ openness to experience and the perceived benefit of international Muslim travelers for development of the tourist destination were significant predictors of emotional solidarity. Residents’ emotional solidarity subsequently explained their attitude toward international Muslim travelers. Attitude toward international Muslim travelers would lead to a positive attitude toward Muslim tourism, which in turn, triggered value cocreation behavior with international Muslim travelers.
Highlights
The Muslim population made up about 1.9 billion of the world’s total population of 7.8 billion in 2020, representing approximately 24% of the total population (World Population Review 2020; Worldometer 2020), and it is expected to increase
The composite reliability (CR) values of the eight constructs ranged from .853 to .961, and all were above the recommended value of .70, establishing the internal consistency in the multiple-item constructs (Fornell and Larcker 1981)
The average variance extracted (AVE) for welcoming nature, emotional closeness, sympathetic understanding, openness to experience, perceived benefit, attitude towards international Muslim travelers, attitude towards Muslim tourism, and value co-creation all achieved the cut-off value of .50, signifying that the amount of variance in each of the constructs was adequately explained by its measurement items (Fornell and Larcker 1981)
Summary
The Muslim population made up about 1.9 billion of the world’s total population of 7.8 billion in 2020, representing approximately 24% of the total population (World Population Review 2020; Worldometer 2020), and it is expected to increase. Muslim travelers have become a fast-growing segment of the global travel and tourism industry. With global Muslim traveler arrivals expected to be 156 million and travel expenditures of US$220 billion by 2020 (GMTI 2018), Muslim travelers have certainly emerged as a crucial segment in the travel market. The Muslim travel market is estimated to grow further to reach travel expenditure of US$300 billion by 2026 (GMTI 2018). The Global Muslim Travel Index (GMTI)(2019) report revealed that the ten non-Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries most visited by Muslim travelers were Spain, France, Russia, Thailand, Singapore, Georgia, Italy, India, United Kingdom, and Greece. America and South Korea are absent from the list, implying that it is important for both countries to tap into this emerging market and maximize the number of international Muslim travelers
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