Affiliation:
1. College of Tourism and Service Management, Nankai University, Tianjin, China
Abstract
Fans’ relationships with celebrities are termed “para-social.” Such one-way relationships with celebrities, often based on social media, might have a special impact on people’s behavior, including travel activities. Scholars have not yet explored the decision-making and behavior of pop culture tourists from the perspective of para-social relationships. In this study, informed by self-construal theory, in-depth interview and questionnaire-based survey were used to explore the impact of different self-construal on fans’ perceptions of the nature of their “fan-celebrity” para-social relationship and their pop culture tourism decision-making. Results indicate that fans whose self-construal is “independent” prefer idols’ habitual residential environment and placed-mediated experiences, while “interdependent” fans prefer interactive experiences, are celebrity oriented, and go where their favorite celebrity was gone.
Funder
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Central University Basic Research Fund of China
Subject
Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management,Transportation,Geography, Planning and Development