Measuring Attractiveness of Tourism Resources by Focusing on Kansei Value Structure: Possibility of Inviting Visitors Using the Japanese Heritage "Ako Salt."

Tomomi Hatano, Tomomi Takezawa, Masashi Sugimoto, Kuangzhe Xu, Takashi Morikawa, Yasuhiro Azuma, Kazuo Shibuta, Noriko Nagata

Abstract: In this study, we measured and categorized the tourism motivations of foreigners who wish to visit Japan to attract inbound visitors and illustrate that the willingness to experience tourism resources differs depending on the type of tourism motivation. We first collected domestic and international scales related to tourism motivations and analyzed the results of rating the importance of each item to create a new tourism motivation scale consisting of comprehensive and representative items. Using this scale, an online questionnaire was administered to 1157 people living in eight countries and regions (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong), and six factors were extracted. As a result of cluster analysis based on the scores of these six factors, we found that the participants could be classified into eight tourism motivation types and that the evaluation of local tourism resources differed depending on the tourism motivation type.