Abstract
Tourism studies commonly focus on the determinants of tourism demand. While most examine factors such as economic determinants, research on the effect of culture on tourism demand remains underdeveloped. This study uses a Bayesian two-stage median regression method to eliminate the potential collinearity between cultural and travel distance and to estimate the impact of cultural distance more appropriately. The results show that while there is a negative relationship between cultural distance and tourism demand, tourism demand is less sensitive to change in cultural distance; the popularity of a travel route moderates the effect of cultural distance on tourism demand; and the influence of cultural distance is different across time and different source markets.
Highlights
International tourism has enjoyed sustained development for years, apart from difficult times such as wars or financial crises
The sum of the residual and constant term is used in the median regression to identify the complete influence of cultural distance on tourism demand
The current study investigates the relationship between cultural distance and tourism demand from a cross-sectional global perspective
Summary
International tourism has enjoyed sustained development for years, apart from difficult times such as wars or financial crises. Several studies focus on the effect of cultural distance on tourism demand using aggregated data (Bi & Lehto, 2018; Esiyok et al, 2017; Yang & Wong, 2012), most of the conclusions are about one specific market. These are difficult to generalise to other source markets or destinations. The findings help academics better understand the antecedents of tourism demand and provide useful information for destinations to develop their marketing and branding strategies.
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