http://hdl.handle.net/10397/1913 Search the Channel search http://repository.lib.polyu.edu.hk/jspui/simple-search http://hdl.handle.net/10397/5727 Title: The production and consumption of online travel photography<br/><br/>Authors: Lo, Sheung Ting<br/><br/>Abstract: Tourist photography has rarely been a research focus. Usually, tourist photographic practices are seen as rather superficial and self-explanatory for a rigorous study. The artifacts of their practices, the travel images, are also devalued as replicas of mass-produced images. Yet, it is important to note that the most trivial aspects of tourist behavior are indeed what shape tourism at large. Most importantly, the emergence of social media and the digitalization of photography have brought tremendous impacts on how images are produced and disseminated. Travel images can now be shared with a much larger sphere of audiences regardless of time and geographical location. The meaning of travel images can be quite different from those days when photographs were still kept within a physical album. This new form of image making and sharing indeed changes the way tourists experience time, place, and self. In light of this, my doctoral thesis aimed to provide insights on how the new form of social interaction, facilitated by the rapid evolution of media and photography technology, shapes contemporary traveling culture and tourist's sense of self. A dramaturgical, reflexive ethnographic approach was adopted to explore the ways micro level of social interaction contributes to the formation of online travel images and tourist self image. Purposive sampling and snowball sampling were adopted to recruit and select participants. Data collection and analysis was composed of two phases. The first phase aimed to examine the ways tourists control impression others have of them through framing, selecting, editing, and posting photographs online. An ethnographic visual analysis of 13 cases was conducted to provide descriptive data of image management and impression management. Through dramaturgical analysis, how participants described and explained their practices were also examined as actions to control impressions. The 13 cases were then categorized according to their consciousness of staging, online performance, consciousness of audience impact, and their perception of other's performance. The second phase aimed to develop a framework that illustrates the learning process of forming an ideal self through sharing photographs online. Erving Goffman's notion of performance, Jacques Lacan's conceptualization of image formation, Lewis and Saarni's taxonomy of lying were drawn upon to provide further explanation of the common patterns and variations emerged from Phase One.; Online posting actually involves deceptions to self and to others, given that the performers are also the audiences of their own performances. Hence, online tourist photography is a back and front stage performance. Some performers lean towards deceiving others by staging their online photographs consciously. Some lean towards deceiving self by denying the performative nature of their sharing. Self-image is externalized to others at the Front largely through the symbolic and internalized to self at the Back through the imaginary. Based on their consciousness of staging and audience impact, four types of performers were also identified yet to be validated in future studies. Underpinned by John Urry's conception of the tourist gaze, tourist photographs are merely seen as a tool for researchers to understand what appeals to the tourists and to relate their significant moments or others to their travel experience. Nonetheless, the findings of this study suggest that, what tourists include and exclude from their travel images indeed involves a lot more than capturing the extraordinary and retaining the significant moments. Hence, I argue that, it is by examining tourists' personal articulations of their travel images and their photographic practices dramaturgically, we can then relocate tourist gaze into a more meaningful, personal context. This study fills the research gap in several ways. First, it provides a framework that recognizes the role of both the performer and the audience in the production and consumption of self. The framework also illustrates how a micro level of social interaction contributes to tourist photographic practices hence the formation of self. Second, the study adopted a dramaturgical approach to examine visual and oral data so that the performative nature of their practices as well as their oral accounts of their practices could be recognized. By doing so, it is able to provide insights of how tourist photography can be shaped by a tourist's subjectivity and their consciousness of audience. It also reveals how tourist photographic practices could bring changes to the tourist's self. Third, unlike most existing studies, this study also notes and analyzes the changes of tourist performance from trip to trip and from time to time, as its unit of analysis is the individual but not the place.<br/><br/>Description: xxi, 343 p. : col. ill. ; 30 cm.; PolyU Library Call No.: [THS] LG51 .H577P SHTM 2012 Lo Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10397/5726 Title: Adoption of web-based self-service technology : a case of airline online check-in systems<br/><br/>Authors: Lee, Yee Sum Louisa<br/><br/>Abstract: The acceptance of technology, particularly various information systems, by tourists has been a well-studied area in tourism literature. Tourism research on technology acceptance has been challenged in a similar setting, from culturally biased perspectives to quantitative investigation. This thesis attempts to fill the knowledge gap by constructing a conceptual model for understanding technology adoption intention of web-based self-service technology (SST) in the tourism industry setting, and by exploring the differences between Asians and Westerners with regard to technology adoption intention dimensions. To achieve the objectives, qualitative and quantitative methods, along with an Etic-Emic approach, were adopted. The entire research followed the Churchill (1979) instrument development procedure to attain the key objectives. To identify the factors affecting web-based SST adoption intention from the perspectives of both Asian and Westerners, the preliminary qualitative study combined the corresponding literature review with focus group interviews with Asians. The following are the eleven factors utilized in the study: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived behavioral control, trust, subjective norm, perceived risk, customization, word of mouth (WOM), perceived playfulness, prior experience, and attitude. Expert panel assessment was carried out to assess the content reliability and validity of all measuring items. Respondents filled out online, self-administered questionnaires in the pilot testing, after which a total of 202 useable questionnaires were gathered. Exploratory factor analysis was employed to analyze the pilot test data, in which nine factors were finalized: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived behavioral control, subjective norm, perceived risk, trustworthy and customized experience, WOM, perceived playfulness, and attitude.; The pilot test was followed by the main survey, which was conducted to construct and test the conceptual model and the relationships among the key constructs via hypotheses testing. The survey took place at the Hong Kong International Airport in March 2012. A total of 479 valid questionnaires were gathered. Quota sampling was used to match the sample with the equal proportion of Asians and Westerners. The data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The five constructs, namely, perceived usefulness, trustworthy and customized experience, perceived risk, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norm, were specified as the significant factors affecting adoption intention, mediated by attitude. Attitude was also confirmed to be a critical determinant affecting technology adoption intention. In addition, divergence of Asians and Westerners in terms of adoption factor was also examined. Compared with their counterparts, Asians were likely to be attentive to WOM, subjective norm, and perceived playfulness. In the final section of this thesis, theoretical and practical implications, as well as research limitations and future research directions, are discussed. Theoretically, this research provided a holistic investigation and collation of the major factors examined in previous technology adoption studies. The thesis contributed to technology adoption research by identifying two new dimensions, customization and WOM, that shade technology adoption intention. A reliable and valid conceptual model and corresponding measuring items were generated. Research findings demonstrated the applicability of the model, and the universal application of the model across populations was also confirmed. The study also revealed the overlooked yet important aspect of web-based SST in tourism research. In terms of the practical implications of the thesis, airline and tourism practitioners were recommended to enhance the functionalities of their current web-based SST, provide more human-touch and customized features, educate users in using the system, devote attention to travelers' internal referents, and carry out sophisticated system security. These recommendations were in consideration of usefulness, trustworthy and customized experience, perceived risk, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control, which were found to be the critical determinants that affect web-based SST adoption intention. Limitations and future research directions were also included.<br/><br/>Description: xiv, 209 p. : ill. ; 30 cm.; PolyU Library Call No.: [THS] LG51 .H577M SHTM 2012 Lee Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10397/5725 Title: The inter-relationship of core job characteristics and work-life balance towards job satisfaction and future career intention of hotel interns<br/><br/>Authors: Siu, Tsz Ying Grace<br/><br/>Abstract: Many hotel management students show negative attitudes towards entering the hotel industry. Such attitudes are likely the result of a negative internship experience that may cause a young person to quickly turn away from the industry. At present, work-life imbalance is identified as one of the possible reasons for turnover as well as health and mental problems of employees. Work-life balance (WLB) is recognized as one of the top five important challenges in human resource management which needs to be further addressed and researched. Thus, it is imperative to investigate the WLB of hotel management students during their internship. Additionally, different hotel job characteristics would lead to different internship experiences. The Job Characteristics Model (JCM) developed by Hackman and Oldham (1976) was employed by many researchers to study employees' job satisfaction in different job positions such as engineers, teachers and sales representatives (Behson, Eddy, & Lorenzet., 2000). Thus, this study adopts hotel internship as a study background to apply JCM in examining hotel management students' internship experience. The present study aims at establishing a conceptual framework by reviewing extensive literature to further investigate the inter-relationship of both internship core job characteristics (CJC) and WLB towards hotel interns' general job satisfaction (GJS) and future career intention (FCI). It is worthwhile to build up this conceptual framework since both aspects of working experience and emotional experience are represented. CJC are related to job nature and WLB is related to the trade-off between personal issue and work; whereas GJS is related to the emotional issue of the interns at work. When these issues are investigated together in a conceptual framework, the students' career interests, competency, and expectation of the industry in the future can be revealed.; The main survey was conducted from November 8, 2011 to December 7, 2011 by targeting hotel management undergraduates who had at least one month of hotel internship experience as research sample. A total of 470 valid data were collected by using purposive sampling method. After conducting the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), a group of scales designed to specifically measure the perceived CJC and WLB in hotel internship had been verified. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was then employed to test the conceptual framework. The findings indicated that the measurement model and structural model both fit the data fairly well; and all the eight hypotheses among the four constructs (CJC, WLB, GJS and FCI) were supported. The present results demonstrated that when hotel management students perceived better CJC and WLB in their internship, they were more satisfied and were more likely to select the hotel industry as their future career. Additionally, when the students experienced greater job satisfaction, they scored higher on the intention to choose a hotel job in the future. Interestingly, a higher score on perceived CJC was a good predictor of a higher degree of WLB during internship. Finally, theoretical implications of the research findings and practical recommendations were offered for hotel management's consideration.<br/><br/>Description: ix, 234 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm.; PolyU Library Call No.: [THS] LG51 .H577M SHTM 2012 Siu Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10397/5724 Title: Integrating social media into website performance evaluation : theory and application to hotels in Hong Kong<br/><br/>Authors: Leung, Yiu Chung Daniel<br/><br/>Abstract: Modern travelers are increasingly reliant on the Internet for searching and purchasing tourism products. As such, the Internet is widely recognized as one of the most influential technologies that have changed the structure of the tourism industry (Buhalis & Law, 2008). In addition, an increasing trend in establishment of hotel websites has drawn hospitality researchers' attention to examine the performance of hotel websites. Considering the paramount importance of website content in engaging customers' interest (Law & Hsu, 2006) and hotel revenue generation (Jeong, Oh, & Gregoire, 2003), a number of hospitality research efforts have been made to evaluate functionality performance of hotel websites. However, previous tourism and hospitality website evaluation studies generally fell short of incorporating the perceptions of all website stakeholders (i.e. , hotel customers, hotel managers and IT professionals). Besides, despite the proliferation of integrating social media into hotel website content, previous researchers seem to underemphasize their significance to website functionality evaluation model. Through integrating the prevalent social media as a new dimension and incorporating the perceived importance of all functionality dimensions as well as their associated attributes provided by hotel website stakeholders, this study develops a modified hotel website functionality performance evaluation model to redress the two limitations in prior studies. Furthermore, the model developed quantitatively evaluates the performance of hotel websites in terms of the richness of information they contain. After two rounds of focus group interviews with twelve website stakeholders, a modified model with 52 functionality attributes under six dimensions was formed. Drawing on the analysis on ordinal data from a mass survey with 354 website stakeholders, "Hotel Reservations Information" was found to be the most important dimension in determining functionality performance of hotel websites. The prevalent "Social Media" was considered as the fourth most important dimension, ranked after "Hotel Contact Information" and "Hotel Facilities Information". The rankings of the dimensions and associated attributes in the current study were generally similar to those in previous research on hotel website evaluation, but some discrepancies were identified.; Applying the modified evaluation model, the functionality performance of 113 Hong Kong hotel websites were assessed and contrasted. "Hong Kong SkyCity Marriott Hotel" performed the best among 113 hotel websites; whereas the websites of "Newtown Hotel Hong Kong" required significant improvement in terms of website information richness. In comparing the dimensional and overall functionality performance among all analyzed hotels, results from the nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis tests and Mann-Whitney tests revealed that there is a statistically significant difference in website functionality performance across hotel ratings and hotel brand affiliation. As one of the first attempts to integrate social media and incorporate the perceptions of all hotel website stakeholders into the model development as well as empirical evaluation process, the findings in this study would contribute to the literature by presenting a more complete, up-to-date and all-rounded set of hotel website evaluation criteria from website stakeholders' perspective. Moreover, utilizing the modified model developed in this study, website developers and hotel practitioners would have a set of standards to benchmark when they try to improve hotel websites.<br/><br/>Description: xiii, 451 p. : ill. ; 30 cm.; PolyU Library Call No.: [THS] LG51 .H577M SHTM 2012 Leung Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT