| The first few years of the21stcentury have witnessed the rapid development ofChina’s tourism industry, which has made great achievements. By the year2011,China has become the third inbound tourism receiving country and the fourthoutbound tourism consuming country as well as one of the fastest growing nations intourism industry in the world. However, the rapid development of tourism industrycannot cover up the existing problems in China’s tourism market, and theenterprises’ opportunism is one of them, which is displayed in a number of forms,such as zero inclusive-fee reception, negative inclusive-fee reception, forcedshopping and so on, and it has been in existence for a long time, not only causingtensions between tourists and enterprises but influencing the healthy development oftourism market. After ensuring a leading nation in the world tourism, China has putforward a new strategic target to become a tourism giant and to foster tourism into anational strategic pillar industry and a modern service industry making people moresatisfied. The realization of this target should be guaranteed by a standard tourismmarket order and the effective solutions of the opportunism problems which havebeen perplexing the healthy development of tourism industry. In this process,institutional environment will play a crucial role. In the past many years, numerouspolicies and measures have been introduced and taken in China to tackle theopportunism in tourism market, but little effect has been achieved, which deserves adeep reflection. Henceforth, it is a pressing time to uncover the reasons foropportunism behavior of Chinese tourism enterprises and the effects of tourists’perception of this problem on B2C relationship as well as the efficiency of theinstitutional environment to deal with opportunism and to maintain B2C relationshipand to what extent does it take effect.Since Williamson (1975) first put forward the concept of opportunism intransaction cost economics theory, people from different fields have conducted manystudies on this topic in terms of its connotations, influence factors and result variables, which provide a necessary theoretical support for an in-depthunderstanding of the Chinese tourism enterprises’ opportunism behavior. Based onthe perspective of tourist perception, fully considering the current situations ofChina’s tourism market, and in combination with the research findings ondependence, environment uncertainty, enterprise performance ambiguity,relationship quality and institutional environment, this thesis proposes a formationand effect path model of the tourists’ perception of enterprise opportunism, forwhich the institutional environment is taken as a moderating variable to betterunderstand the effect of institutional environment on reducing the tourists’perception of enterprise opportunism, and, in turns, the effect of the perceptionreduction on B2C relationship, and to find the defects of the institutionalenvironment. Accordingly, this thesis chooses quantitative method as a mainresearch tool.556tourists, who are mainly from Tianjin, Beijing, Shandong,Zhejiang, Yunnan, Hainan and Guangzhou, are taken as a sample for the study, mostof whom have participated the package tour activity organized by the travel agency.PLS path modeling method is used to test the proposed theoretical model.There are six chapters in this thesis. The first chapter firstly talks about therealistic and theoretical background of the research, and then identifies the purposesand significance of the study. The chapter also summarizes the research contents andtechnological route, puts forward the innovative points, and presents the overallframework of the thesis. The second chapter reviews the related research andidentifies the research directions and the theoretical foundations for the follow-upstudy. Based on theoretical analysis and deductive inference, the third chapterconstructs a theoretical research model and proposes the research hypothesis. Thefourth chapter firstly defines the latent variables involved in the study, and developsa scale for pilot study. Then it constructs the final questionnaire on the basis of thepilot study, describes the data elicited from the formal investigation, and choosesdata analysis tool. The fifth chapter uses the empirical data to test the relationshipsbetween the variables in the model and check the research hypotheses. The sixthchapter summarizes the main research findings and provides some suggestions forfuture management. It also points out the limitations of this study and directions for future research.The thesis displays its innovations in the following ways. Firstly, it integratestransaction cost analysis theory and social exchange theory, and constructs aresearch framework for analyzing the enterprises’ opportunism behaviors on thebasis of tourists’ perception. Empirical data is collected to test the path relationshipbetween the different variables in the proposed research framework, which expandsthe research of opportunism in B2C field, filling a research gap in tourism research,and enriches the theory system of opportunism study. Secondly, it introduces theinstitutional environment into the "Tourist’s Opportunism Perception-RelationshipQuality" framework, and constructs an effect mechanism model for comprehensivelyanalyzing the influence of institutional environment on solving opportunism problemand maintaining B2C relationship in China. Thirdly, it provides a way for thecomprehensive analysis of the institutional environment, which is divided into threesubcategories, that is, regulative institutional environment, normative institutionalenvironment and cognitive institutional environment. This study reveals the functionmechanism and path for analyzing the influence of the institutional environment ontourist’s opportunism perception and B2C relationship in a more comprehensive andin-depth way, which is not only of significance for enriching the existingopportunism research but also of great value for deepening the research on theinstitutional environment. |
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