Recently, as the tourism industry has been revitalized around the world, research on 'overtourism' is being conducted. The importance of certain tourist destinations with the attractiveness of the place and well-established infrastructure is being hig...
Recently, as the tourism industry has been revitalized around the world, research on 'overtourism' is being conducted. The importance of certain tourist destinations with the attractiveness of the place and well-established infrastructure is being highlighted as more tourists visit them.
Research on overtourism is still very scarce in the academic world. Most of the previous studies on overtourism were conducted focusing on the tourism development attitude of local residents and the difference in perceptions of tourists and local residents, and in particular, it is regrettable that research has been conducted for local residents to participate in and cooperate in tourism development, excluding the tourism subject sector, even though the main cause of overtourism is tourism. In order to actively conduct quantitative research on overtourism in the future, the subjectivity of research should be clarified, and research values should be established in a different direction that is distinct from previous studies, and the positive parts of overtourism can only be fundamentally studied through the attitudes and behavioral intentions of tourists visiting overtourism areas.
Therefore, it is necessary to analyze their tourism attitudes and behavioral intentions from the perspective of tourists as the subject of overtourism tourism, and specifically to study which components of overtourism influence tourists' attitudes and behavioral intentions. In order to start a theoretical study of overtourism, it is necessary to conduct a study on how overtourism affects tourists' attitudes and behavioral intentions for tourists visiting the overtourism area.
In this study, an empirical study was conducted on overtourism, tourist attitudes, and behavioral intentions for tourists who visited overtourism areas. Through the establishment of this basic theory of overtourism, it is intended to investigate whether overtourism affects tourists' attitudes and behavioral intentions in academic terms, and contribute to providing theoretical data that are the basis for future overtourism research.
In this study, by operationally defining the constituent factors and measurement questions of previous studies, overtourism was composed of three factors: economic factors, social factors, and environmental factors, attitudes were composed of three factors: purchase, respect, and familiarity, and behavioral intentions were composed of a single dimension. To conduct empirical analysis, 300 questionnaires were directly distributed and collected, and a total of 273 of the collected questionnaires were used for analysis. For empirical analysis, frequency analysis, reliability and validity analysis, and multiple regression analysis were performed using SPSS ver. 21.0, a statistical package program, and through this, the suitability of the research model was secured so that each measurement item could be used for future overtourism research.
As a result of hypothesis testing in this study, H1 found that overtourism will have a significant effect on tourists' attitudes. The economic factors of overtourism were found to have a significant effect on tourists' purchasing and respecting, the social factors of overtourism were found to have a significant effect on tourists' purchasing and respecting, and the environmental factors of overtourism were the only ones that had a significant effect on tourists' familiarity. Second, H2, which is said that tourists' attitudes will have a significant effect on behavioral intentions, was found to have a significant effect on tourists' behavioral intentions. Third, H3, which is said that overtourism will have a significant effect on tourists' behavioral intentions, was found that the economic factors of overtourism influence behavioral intentions through tourists' attitudes, and the social and environmental factors of overtourism had a significant effect on tourists' behavioral intentions.
In tourism, overtourism will continue for sustainable tourism development. While previous studies tried to identify overtourism in terms of tourism capacity, etc., which discusses regional development, this study is meaningful in that it established the basic theory that is the basis of overtourism research based on previous studies and empirical analysis, and tried to newly identify the sub-factors of overtourism. In addition, in a number of previous studies related to overtourism, surveys were conducted on local residents, but in this study, tourists who visited the overtourism area as the subject of tourism were selected as the subjects of the survey, and the relationship between their perception of overtourism, attitudes, and behavioral intentions was studied.
This study has limitations in research derived from differentiated implications that the subject of overtourism research was determined by expanding the survey target to tourists who visited overtourism areas from the perspective of local residents. In order to target tourists who visited overtourism areas, the spatial background of the study was limited to Korea, and there is a limit to generalizing the research results because it is not possible to clearly distinguish nearby residents among tourists who visited the overtourism area. In future overtourism research, it is necessary to measure whether or not they live in the neighborhood in more detail and to find out what difference there is in the influence relationship between tourists' attitudes and behavioral intentions by linking overtourism and overtourism perception research.