The Relationship Research Between Events Perception And Place Identity

The thesis bases on the theories of place identity and event studies, did a survey to theevent goers of participating International Horticultural Exposition2011Xi’an(西安) China,and measured their events perception and place identity. On the basis of domestic andinternational events perception and place identity theory, this paper proposed four hypotheses,and constructed the conceptual model of the relationship between events perception and placeidentity.First of all, by several rounds of exploratory factor analysis in SPSS17.0, the researcherextracted eight factors of events perception from35items. They are external environmental,the supply of basic needs, experience value, the perception of direct price, supportingfacilities and sanitation, events itself factors, service perception and the factor of organizers.Second, the thesis used these mathematical statistical methods of T-test, nonparametrictests and mean comparison to analyze the differences of events perception factors andevent-goers’ place identity on the personal characteristics variables. The results showed thatthe overall perception of events and the perception factors partly have significant differencesin gender, marital status, age, income and the familiarity of Xi’an Expo, and verified thehypothesis of H1. And the event-goers’ place identity shows significant difference in personalidentity of event-goers, the time of residence or stay in Xi’an, participation ways and thefamiliarity of Xi’an or Xi’an Expo, and verified the hypothesis of H2.Third, constructed the structural equation modeling(SEM) to explore the effect of overallperception of events, various dimensions of perceptions and behavioral tendency asintermediary variable on place identity. The results showed that goers’ overall perceptiondirectly affects place identity positively and significantly, and it indirectly affects placeidentity by behavioral tendency which mediated between them. Goers’ behavioral tendencyalso affects place identity positively and significantly. Place identity is influenced only byexperience value and events itself factor significantly in the various factors of eventsperception, and the impact is positive. Therefore the hypothesis of H3had been supportedpartially. And by analyzing the impact of socio-demographic characteristic variables to thetheoretical model, the author found that the effect of events perception to place identity indifferent gender, education and personal identity of groups of goers have some difference.Finally, with samples of not participated and participated in the Expo to have differencetests and mean comparison, the results found the place identity of the two samples havesignificant differences. So it proved that holding Xi’an Expo (events) plays a positive role in improve event-goers’ place identity. The hypothesis of H3was supported.According to the findings of this article, the author proposed some revelation aboutholding events, and analyzed the innovation, inadequacies and future research directions ofthis thesis.