Taiwan Tourism Research Articles

Analyzing tourist expenditures incurred on long-, medium-, and short-haul trips to Taiwan

This study examined the consumption demands of short-, medium-, and long-haul tourists in Taiwan, considering the effects of tourism attractiveness, generational cohorts, and nationalities on tourism consumption demand. We employed an Almost Ideal Demand System model to estimate the expenditures and price elasticities based on tourism expenditure data of 3018 visitors to Taiwan. The results indicated that varying degrees of price elasticity were observed among short-, medium-, and long-haul tourists. Long-haul tourists exhibited the highest elasticity in terms of shopping prices and expenditure. The factors influencing tourists' attraction to Taiwan were identified as the geographical convenience of their travel and their nationalities, which, in turn, affected their consumption demands. Thus, based on tourists' relevant characteristics to implement targeted marketing strategies.

Motivation-Based Segmentation of Hiking Tourists in Taiwan

Hiking is one of the most popular and significant recreational activities in natural settings, yet hiking tourists are often not distinguished from the broader population of nature-based tourists. This study aimed to identify distinct segments of hiking tourists based on their motivations and to explore the relationship between segmentation, motivations, and their satisfaction with the hiking experience. Using a questionnaire survey of 262 hiking tourists in Taiwan and multivariate statistical techniques, four hiking motives—“relaxation”, “social interaction”, “competence and exploration”, and “mental refreshment”—were identified, and four segments of hiking tourists—“mental refreshment seekers”, “social hikers”, “challenge seekers”, and “general purpose hikers”—were classified, respectively. While all segments reported high levels of satisfaction, their satisfaction was influenced by different motives. This study enhances the theoretical understanding of hiking motives and provides practical recommendations for enhancing hiking experiences and nature conservation.

Enhancement of Marina Service Quality of Yacht Tourism in Taiwan: A Euclidean Distance of Importance-Performance Analysis

In spite of COVID-19 struck tourism industry, the trend of yachting tourism is steadily increasing and provides a way for the tourism industry to resume after the epidemic. Marinas, a vital component of yachting tourism, deeply effects the yacht owners’ satisfactions and the coastal destinations attraction. Since the marina industry in Taiwan is still in its early stages, this study aims to identify ideal service quality standards to enhance competitiveness. With a limited cohort of 69 yacht owners in Taiwan possessing yachts exceeding 20 gross register tonnage (GRT), insights from our research, which engaged perspectives from 50 yacht owners, provide valuable understanding into their satisfaction regarding marina services in Taiwan. As the first study to explore key factors of marina service experience among yacht owners, this study applies importance-performance analysis (IPA) and Euclidean distance to provide the development strategy and improvement priority of Taiwan marina service. Overall, the result from improving IPA technique which adopted Euclidean distance reveal that yacht owners generally thought that the improvement priority of marina service quality is sewage, bilge water, and oil sludge treatment facilities, fueling facilities, high-voltage shore power facilities, land storage space. It is noteworthy that marina managers should embark on improving marina physical facilities as development strategy which highlight the performance of marina service quality for yacht owners and the improvement in those facilities can be developed to either increase the marina competition or to resume tourism industry.

The analysis of the medical tourism expansion policy in Taiwan: a policy analysis using Kingdon’s multiple streams

BackgroundSince 2006, Taiwan has actively pursued the development of its medical tourism industry. In 2013, the government sought to bolster this sector by integrating medical tourism into the Free Economic Pilot Zones. Despite narrowly missing the mark, the initiative failed to materialize into law. This qualitative study endeavors to discern the pertinent factors influencing the agenda-setting process for incorporating medical tourism into the Free Economic Pilot Zones in Taiwan.MethodsA comprehensive examination of policies concerning the legitimation of medical tourism within the Free Economic Pilot Zones was undertaken through semi-structured interviews and a thorough review of policy documents. Key informants were strategically selected using purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Thematic analysis was applied to scrutinize the amassed data and organize it within the framework of Kingdon's multiple streams.ResultsIn the problem stream, increasing financial strains and cost containment pressures under the National Health Insurance program have long driven health care providers to seek further opportunities in medical tourism. The existing barriers to expanding medical tourism in Taiwan included diplomatic tensions (specifically cross-strait relations), public concerns about commercialization of medical care and reduced their access to care, and legal and language barriers. Within the policy stream, factors such as franchise fees to support national health insurance, limited number of demonstration medical tourism sites and services allowed, the allowance of foreign medical personnel, regulations governing domestic physicians, the importance of demonstration, regulation, and accreditation, as well as restrictions on investment from China, were emphasized. The politics stream highlights factors such as governmental support, opposition from opposing parties, public concerns and critics from academia and non-governmental organizations, and skepticism from medical faculties.ConclusionAcknowledging the recognized challenges in enacting the medical tourism provision of the Free Economic Pilot Zones Special Act and emphasizing the political will of leadership, a viable policy solution remained elusive. Although a window of opportunity existed for the passage of the bill, it waned as public concerns sidelined the issue from the national agenda. The Taiwan case underscores the necessity for meticulous consideration of issues, proposed solutions, and political dynamics to achieve successful policy enactment.

How the perception of climate change impacts sustainable tourism: empirical evidence from Taiwan

ABSTRACT Drawing on protection motivation theory and resilience theory, this study develops a conceptual framework of perceived vulnerability, perceived threat severity, coping appraisal, psychological resilience and pro-environmental behavioural intention based on a sample of 1,079 tourists in Taiwan. The empirical findings indicated that both tourists’ perceived vulnerability and perceived threat severity were significantly related to their coping appraisal. Moreover, tourists’ coping appraisals were positively and significantly related to their psychological resilience, which positively and statistically impacted their pro-environmental behavioural intentions. Tourists’ coping appraisals and psychological resilience also played meditating roles in the proposed conceptual framework. These findings thus extend scientific knowledge by providing insights and implications for sustainable tourism that contribute to the literature.

Political tides and tourist waves: Mainland China’s policy impact on Taiwan’s tourism

This study assesses the impact of Mainland China’s open-door and closed-door tourism policies on tourist arrivals in Taiwan using the regression control method. The period from 2001 to 2019 highlights that political dynamics significantly influence tourism flows. The enactment of the open-door policy (2008–2015) coincided with a marked increase of Mainland Chinese tourists in Taiwan, averaging an annual rise of 2.19 million. In contrast, the closed-door policy (2016–2019) saw a drastic average annual reduction of 2.53 million visitors. These stark contrasts confirm the potent effect of political policies on tourism. The research underscores the potential of tourism as a diplomatic bridge, suggesting strategic importance for policymakers and industry leaders in navigating the intersection of politics and tourism.

Evaluation of Operating Performance of Listed Companies in Taiwan’s Tourism Industry - Application of Data Envelopment Analysis

Data envelopment analysis is an efficiency measurement method proposed by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes in 1978, including CCR model efficiency analysis and BCC model efficiency analysis, which is used to evaluate the relative efficiency of decision-making units. The measured efficiency value is the most favorable result of the evaluated unit under objective circumstances. This article applies data envelopment analysis method to evaluate the performance of listed companies in Taiwan's tourism industry. After analysis, it was found that the total efficiency of the six tourism industries including Huayuan, No. 1 Store, Gourmet KY, Wangpin, Xiongshi, and Holaday is effective, while the total efficiency of the three tourism industries including Farglory, Phoenix, and Xintiandi is not Effective, but technical efficiency is still effective. Except for the tourism industry whose total efficiency is effective, its returns to scale remain unchanged. Two tourism industries, such as Guobin and Jinghua, have diminishing returns to scale because their return to scale value is >1 and should reduce their business scale. The returns to scale of other tourism industries are all Increasingly, it is recommended to expand the scale of operations.

The effects of perceived cultural distance and perceived discrimination on the destination image and behaviour intention of international student tourists in Taiwan

This study aimed to explore perceived cultural distance, perceived discrimination, destination image, and behavioural intention as well as the relationships among these constructs in international student tourists in Taiwan. By employing partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), the findings showed that perceived cultural distance significantly impacted the cognitive and affective images of a destination, whereas perceived discrimination negatively influenced cognitive and affective images. Additionally, the results revealed that perceived cultural distance did not affect behavioural intention; however, perceived discrimination negatively affected behavioural intention. The findings also showed that cognitive image mediated the interrelationships among perceived cultural distance, perceived discrimination, and behavioural intention, whereas affective image was not a mediator in these correlations. The findings of this study have several implications that can benefit tourism academia and industry, particularly destination management organisations and tourism enterprises.

Value Co-Creation Process in Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships: The Case of Hakka Heritage Tourism in Taiwan

The purpose of this study is to explore how multi-stakeholder co-create collective value in a local context. Moreover, we aim to examine what barriers between the participators and what mechanisms could reduce these barriers, and then induce the local value. This paper presents a collaborative project that the university implemented in Jia-dong, a township of Pingtung county in Taiwan. Jia-dong is a traditional Hakka cluster with rich and historical elements. The purpose of collaborative project is to integrate Jia-dong’s developmental factors and help to create local value. This case study demonstrates that different stake-holder motivations and their ability to provide resources, differences are observed in the value creation activities and mechanisms at three stages: mobilization, expansion, and stabilization. This paper contrib-utes in two aspects: first, it highlights the evolution of collaborative rela-tionships among stakeholders during the process of value co-creation, and second, it provides a deep understanding of the role of value co-creation mechanisms is deeply understood while collaborative barriers derive from developing the local tourism.

Impacts of Tourists’ Shopping Destination Trust on Post-Visit Behaviors: A Loss Aversion Perspective

ABSTRACT Despite tourism scholars’ growing interest in shopping tourism, little is known about whether a continuous improvement in shopping environments symmetrically improves shopping tourists’ post-visit behaviors. Based on the cognition – affect – behavior model and loss aversion perspective, this study proposed a theoretical framework examining the relationships between shopping destination trust (SDT), destination emotion (DE), place attachment (PA), risk perception (RP), tourist satisfaction (TS), and revisit intention (RI). A total of 786 valid questionnaires were collected from inbound foreign tourists in Taiwan. The structural equation modeling results suggest significant asymmetric positive effects of SDT on DE and PA. Furthermore, the results show that DE and PA mediate the relationship between SDT and RI. Moreover, RP moderates the relationship between SDT and PA, as well as PA and TS.

Developing Sustainable Indicators for Forest Farm Tourism Services for Senior Citizens: Towards the Establishment of a Comprehensive and Comfortable Environment

The evolving travel preferences of senior citizens have necessitated the customization of tourism services by the industry to cater to their specific needs. Forest ecology landscapes have been identified as offering significant advantages for senior citizens in the context of tourism. This study aims to address the research gap in this area by developing sustainable forest farm tourism service indicators tailored to the senior citizens in Taiwan, taking into consideration the benefits of forest ecology landscapes. The Fuzzy Delphi Technique (FDT) is employed to gather expert opinions and establish indicators, while triangular fuzzy numbers and defuzzification techniques are utilized to evaluate professional opinions from various agricultural fields. The analysis reveals 5 dimensions and 28 indicators that are deemed appropriate for creating a sustainable forest farm tourism service environment for the senior citizens. Key indicators include the ability of service personnel to effectively address guest concerns, cleanliness of farm accommodations, safety of farm routes, friendliness of service staff, and the presence of barrier-free facilities in farm accommodations. This study provides valuable insights for promoting sustainable farm management and the development of forest farm tourism in Taiwan, emphasizing the significance of forest ecology landscapes in enhancing the tourism experience for senior citizens.

Preparing for a future crisis: using DEA-based performance analysis to assess initial pandemic responses in the Taiwanese hotel industry

PurposeTaiwan’s hotel industry was adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to examine the effect of strategic choices by Taiwanese international tourist hotels before and during the pandemic environments.Design/methodology/approachA data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based Malmquist methodology is used in this study to provide a mechanism to assess Taiwanese hotel strategy performance. Changes in the productivity and performance of Taiwanese international tourist hotels were analyzed in the periods before and during the pandemic to uncover insights useful should a similar crisis occur in the future. Panel data were obtained from the annual report of international tourist hotels published by the Taiwan Tourism Bureau from 2017–2020. Two groups of hotels were analyzed in this study: city hotels and scenic hotels.FindingsThe findings of this study reveal that chain hotels tended to perform better than independent hotels in both city and scenic areas during the global pandemic. Specifically, the crisis caused a substantial decline in productivity and profitability for international tourist hotels in Taipei City during the COVID-19 period. Compared to city hotels, findings also indicate that most international tourist hotels in scenic areas were able to maintain better productivity, including larger-sized scenic hotels.Originality/valueThe DEA-based analysis provides unique and valuable insights for hotel firm leaders on how to better identify and make strategic choices when responding to future crises.

Exploring the Sustainable Strategies to Reinforce the Benefit Awareness from Festival Events Management

<p>With international travel trending toward globalization, countries are increasingly focusing on preserving their unique local cultures while maintaining awareness about global tourism perspectives. Since 2017, Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau proposed the Taiwanese Sustainable Tourism Development Program for further development, the Program aims to encourage local governments to promote “Time for Celebration – Taiwan Tourism Events” and create tourism event highlights by promoting developments in regional tourism and related industries. This study aims to explore the role of local residents in festivals from a sustainable development perspective using survey data. It examines local residents’ attitudes and support residents toward festivals. The study details the influence of local residents on festivals, which in turn, depends on the benefits visitors gain from such participation.</p> <p> </p>

Sakura Shrimp as a hybrid spokes-character: How Japanese moe anthropomorphism promotes tourism in Taiwan

The younger generation of Taiwanese do not merely consume Japanese popular culture as a ‘foreign’ product; they have integrated Japanese cultural elements into many aspects of Taiwan’s local cultural creations as a Taiwan–Japan hybrid form. One example of this is that the majority of Taiwanese visual artists follow the Japanese manga format, aesthetics and grammar when they create their own work. In this article, we examine trends of moe anthropomorphism in manga, a method that personifies animals, objects, cities and natural phenomena as cute human characters. Using a cultural studies framework, we trace how Japanese moe anthropomorphism helps Taiwanese visual artists and local governments to promote domestic tourism and further individuals’ desire to get to know Taiwan. The spokes-character, Sakura Shrimp, serves as an example to illustrate the trend, the purpose and the readers’ responses to this new way of local tourism marketing.

How do smart tourism experiences affect visitors’ environmentally responsible behavior? Influence analysis of nature-based tourists in Taiwan

Drawing on experiential learning cycle theory, in the present study, a theoretical framework is constructed by performing an influence analysis of smart tourism experiences regarding biospheric value and environmentally responsible behavior (ERB) among 1172 visitors at two smart tourism destinations in Taiwan, providing theoretical and practical implications for sustainable tourism perspectives. The analytical findings reveal that the constructs of aesthetic experience, ease of experience, and learning experience significantly impacted the biospheric value for visitors at the two destinations. Moreover, biospheric value significantly impacted site-specific ERB for visitors at the two destinations. The findings thus extend the application of experiential learning cycle theory, updating and extending the knowledge of smart tourism experience and ERB. It is concluded that an individual with stronger smart tourism experiences of aesthetic experience, ease experience, and learning experience will enhance his or her biospheric value, which subsequently may increase his or her site-specific ERB.

Elucidating International Travelers’ Tourism Image of Taiwan: A Qualitative Approach

Although Western alien visitors to Taiwan have a unique, well-informed perspective of what appeals to tourists from their countries, little research has been conducted to assess their insights, representing a significant research gap. To fill this gap, this study aims to elucidate how international tourists perceive Taiwan as a tourist destination by collecting detailed qualitative data via in-depth interviews of twenty-four international expatriates. This study illustrated the image differences before and after the visit of international tourists by analyzing the dimensions of tourists’ consensus maps and the changes in their perception of the natural, social, cultural, gourmet food, and Aboriginal image of Taiwan. This study provides a better understanding of how international tourists in Taiwan view its current and potential appeal as a tourist destination, so as to identify ways of attracting new tourists from their cultures. Patterns emerged that suggest new approaches for promoting Taiwan tourism and tourism sustainability which might not occur to Taiwanese tourism professionals due to the interviewees’ unique points of view. This research concludes that the application of cultural promotion strategies, planned tour packages, and improvement of the image of nature, culture, society, food, and Aboriginal people in Taiwan will thereby improve the overall satisfaction of international tourists, building online image, and forming e-word-of-mouth.

Exploring rural winery loyalty: The effect of visitors’ experience in Taiwan rural winery tourism

Wine tourism has the potential to make a significant impact on rural tourism in Taiwan. The aim of this study is to examine the impact of rural winery visitors' motivation on experience associations such as emotion, trust, and loyalty. Samples were collected from 320 rural winery visitors using a systematic sample method. AMOS16 was used to conduct confirmatory factor analysis, verify the reliability and validity of measurement items to test the structural equation, and verify the proposed hypotheses. The results evidence that rural winery visitors' motivation significantly positively impacts their winery visit experience. The visitors' experience then significantly influences winery visitors' emotion, trust toward rural winery, and loyalty. Moreover, trust toward rural winery also has a significantly positive impact on loyalty. This study's contribution is the recognition of tourist motivation as a predicate variable of wine tourism experiences, as well as the relationship between wine tourism experiences, and winery trust and loyalty. Rural wineries should employ a holistic evaluation of visitors' motivation, which would enhance the strategic value of the winery visit experience. Additionally, this research proposes insights into novel visit experiences for the wine tourism industry. Winery owners benefit from this research by gaining the required knowledge to target winery experiences to the diverse range of visitors' motivations. The findings also have managerial implications for visit motivation and visit experience management in the wine tourism sector.

The impact of border control policy on tourists’ behaviors in Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic

In response to the global pandemic of the COVID-19 outbreak, Taiwan barred foreign nationals from entering into Taiwan starting from March 19th, 2020. This study aims to explore the impact of lockdown policy on the length of stay, tourism expenditure, tourist satisfaction and revisit intention based on a sample of 3987 inbound visitors collected from the 2020 Annual Survey Report on Visitor Expenditures and Trends, published by the Taiwan Tourism Bureau. The empirical results indicate that: (1) the border control policy increases the length of stay of around 33.4719 nights; (2) a drop of the total expenditure, F&B expenditure, transportation expenditure, entertainment expenditure, and shopping expenditure but an increase of accommodation expenditure is found; (3) the border control policy seems to reduce the level of tourist satisfaction but does not affect revisit intention.

Tourism combination forecasting using a dynamic weighting strategy with change-point analysis

ABSTRACT Combination forecasting is an important in the literature on tourism. This study considers three important issues to develop a more accurate combination forecasting method for tourism forecasting. We address the unrealistic requirement related to the statistical properties of the collected data for model fitting, assign changing rather than fixed weights to single models, and incorporate nonlinear relationships among single-model forecasts into forecast combinations. This leads us to develop a three-stage procedure for combination forecasting that consists of generating single-model forecasts with grey prediction models, detecting significant changes in the time series to determine when to update the weights for combining the forecasts, and nonlinearly combining individual forecasts based on a dynamic weighting strategy. In contrast with commonly used fixed weighting, the dynamic weighting used here involves the use of change points to identify the period for which the weights need to be re-estimated. The inbound demand for tourism in Taiwan was used as an empirical case to assess the performance of the proposed framework for forecast combinations. The results show that the nonlinear fuzzy integral with the proposed dynamic weighting strategy significantly outperforms that with the fixed weighting strategy, and has a superior forecasting accuracy than other combined models.

Revisiting the Taiwan tourism and economic growth nexus: The role of the impact of COVID-19 using Quantile on Quantile approach

ABSTRACT In this paper, we analyse the tourism-led growth hypothesis in Taiwan’s economy. To this end, we consider three tourism markets––China, Japan and the US––and apply quantile-on-quantile regression. Our results indicate that (i) high quantiles of the Chinese tourist market have the most growth effects, while moderate quantiles of Japan and the US markets accelerate economic growth in Taiwan; (ii) recessions in these three markets during the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected the economic growth of Taiwan and (iii) development of these three tourism markets acts as an engine of economic growth during downturn periods.