Examination of Chinese Cruise Tourists’ Attributes Using a Choice Experiment

Abstract

Several studies have mentioned the differentiation between Western and Asian cultures in terms of people’s backgrounds, life styles, and perspectives. In particular, in cruise tourism, tourists from China have shown different behavior from Western tourists. Previous research has investigated the preferences of cruise tourists. However, there have been few systematic studies of their preferences. Thus, it is necessary to examine cultural uniqueness with a systematic method. Therefore, the main purpose of the study is to apply a choice experiment (CE), which is a scientific method for understanding Chinese tourists’ preferences for a given attribute as a form of marginal willingness-to-pay, and to identify their priorities. In order to collect the data from an online data platform, the answers from 244 Chinese were used for multinomial logit analysis. The study results demonstrate that the respondents placed the highest value on having a variety of shopping items in duty-free shops on board. Furthermore, room type, percentage of traditional Chinese food served, and touring in ports of call were also statistically significant attributes. The conclusion and the implications of this study will be discussed.