Push-pull Theory-based Tourism Destination Image Research

Has experienced source-driven period, product-driven period and market and marketing-driven period, the tourism industry has already been in image-driven period. It becomes more and more important to have a vivid and unique tourism destination image for both tourism operators and tourism destinations. And the key issue is to identify the composition and influential factors of destination image. Especially, it's eagerly to do theory and practical research in China, which is far behind what has been done outside the country.Comparing to the dimension of outside-inside and demand-supply, which are usually used in destination image research, the pull-push model dominates tourism motivation in tourism destination image research. This model, which was introduced in human migration originally, is easier to identify influential factors of destination image. This dissertation introduces this model to destination image research, which ranges tourism motivation as pull factor and tourism image as push factor. Tourism image is composed by cognitive image, affective image and overall image. This dissertation chooses historical town tourism—tourism in Wu Zhen, which belongs to heritage tourism, as an example to testify the hypothesis that information sources and demographic factors influence tourism motivation and cognitive image significantly, and tourism motivation and cognitive image influence affective image significantly, which supports the supposed model based on pull & push model.In the example of Wu Zhen, the motivations include self-realization, amusement and leisure, study, escaping from bother, social communication and exercise. And the cognition of image of Wu Zhen includes three aspects, which are establishment & service for visitation, establishment & service for reception and sight & culture. Information sources and demographic factors have different influences in different tourism motivations and cognitive images.