Effects of media and destination image on the behavioral intention to visit Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival

Abstract

After Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival was introduced as one of 7 Wonders of Winter on CNN America’s website in 2011, the festival has been covered by various media. The media effect brought an increase in visitors to HIF. This study aims to understand the festival visitors’ destination image according to the exposed media information, attitude, and behavioral intention by adopting the Extended Theory of Planned Behavior (ETPB) including additional constructs such as media information and destination image. An on-site survey was conducted among 423 visitors attending the festival from January 21 to January 27, 2013. A total of 451 questionnaires were used for empirical analysis. The survey results revealed that both media information and three aspects of the festival’s image (cognitive, affective, and unique) indirectly influenced the festival visitors’ behavioral intention. Specifically, media information had a significant influence on all three aspects of the image, and it had the greatest influence on the unique image. Affective image and unique image significantly affected festival visitors’ attitude. Although attitude and subjective norm had significant effects on behavioral intention to attend the festival, perceived behavioral control and frequency of past behavior was statistically insignificant on behavioral intention. Based on these research results, theoretical importance and practical implications are discussed in this paper.