Impact of distance on the arrivals, behaviours and attitudes of international tourists in Hong Kong: A longitudinal approach

Abstract

This study revisits the impact of distance on international tourist behaviours in Hong Kong. This work divides and cross-validates the concept of distance into physical and cultural distance. This work also proposes an alternative cultural distance measure by introducing optimal weight amongst Hofstede's dimensions and then compares the proposed measure with the traditional Kogut and Singh's and Kandogan's measures. By using data from the Visitor Profile Report of the Hong Kong Tourism Board and the World Trade Organisation from 2002 to 2017, along with latent growth curve modelling, multivariate regression and panel data analysis, findings confirmed the significant role of physical and cultural distance. In addition, quadratic relationships are detected using cross-validation methods. The effect of physical distance on tourist demands clearly dominates that of cultural distance in the overall market. The problem of spurious correlation and the results of three cultural distance measures are also discussed.