Research On Tourism Destination Image Building Based On Social Distance Measure

The healthy development of tourism is closely connected with inhabitants’ attitudes toward tourism and tourists as well as its development. For Dali Old Town, social distance is a research topic of great value. What requests will the social distance between tourists and inhabitants make to Dali Old Town and inhabitants? The social distance between inhabitants and tourists is quite crucial for the continuous development of some tourist resorts whose lifecycle is still at the consolidation stage. The image of tourist destination is a kind of important tourist resource, including not only man-place perceptive image, but also man-man image whose important component is inhabitant. The social distance between tourists and inhabitants refers to both two kinds of perceptive images. However, so far, the research about the image-building of social distance of tourist destination has not been conducted yet. Therefore, this thesis is of great theoretical significance for studying the image-building of tourist destination from the perspective of social distance.With the selection of Dali Old Town as the research object, the paper applies a concept of sociology-- social distance to the study of relationship among inhabitants, tourists and potential tourists, which aims at exploring the closeness and distance between inhabitants and tourists as well as potential tourists by using the concept of social distance. By reference to the Social Distance Scale of Bogardus, the present study designs a social distance scale in the subject view of tourists, inhabitants and potential tourists according to the practical situation of tourist activity research. The study is expected to promote the tourism development of Dali Old Town by measuring the social distance and putting forward suggestions to the image-building of tourist destination.Chapter One is the introduction about the research background, significance, methods and contents.Chapter Two reviews relevant theoretical researches, including the research progress of social distance at home and abroad as well as the research development of the image theory of tourist destination.The third chapter refers to the general development situation of Dali Old Town tourism, the design method of questionnaire and its distribution form.Chapter Four is about a case of empirical study. According to the data of questionnaire from Dali Old Town, the author measures and compares two social distances-- one is between the potential tourists and native inhabitants and the other is between actual tourists and natives. Besides, the analyses and exploration about interview data are conducted in this chapter.The next chapter presents the influential factors of the social distance of Dali Old Town by using some methods like credit analysis, variance analysis, descriptive analysis and independent t-test.In the light of research results of social distance, Chapter Six aims at proposing some suggestions for the image-building of tourist destination and to shrink the social distance between tourists and inhabitants.The last chapter comes to the conclusion and prospect.