Abstract:
For more in-depth understanding of tourism destination image(TDI), according to Gestalt psychology theory, jigsaw puzzle and tangram concepts were borrowed to further explain the definition of the concept of tourism destination image, its dimensions and properties, and a tourism destination image puzzles process model that can be used to comparative study of TDI was built. Furthermore, a case study of the China international tourism image was analyzed. The main conclusions are as follow: (1)TDI is the “puzzle result” of information fragment that people getting form multiple channels about a tourism destination, not just an individual′s overall perception or total set of impressions of a destination. (2)The “puzzle process” leads to the complexity, diversity and dynamic of the TDI and it is the reason why the TDI planning and marketing can produce market persuade effects. (3)The TDI can be defined in five dimensions, including tourist attraction, infrastructure, leisure and recreation, environment and local atmosphere, and each dimension contains different properties. (4)The more complete tourism destination image dimensions, and the more abundant each dimension attribute, the tourist′s image puzzle result is the closer to the actual destination. (5)The TDI formation process contains four stages and three procedures. The four stages are fragment stage, puzzle stage, emotional evaluation and conation, the three procedures are spontaneous formation of native image puzzle, initiative formation of cognitive image and corrective formation of overall image.(6)Four index for measuring the TDI are put forward in the paper. Those are the degree of matching (Dm) used to measure the goodness of fit between the marketing image and planning image, the level of awareness (La) of the market consistency, the dimension attributes diversity index (H), evenness index (E) and dominance index (D) for quantitative evaluation and comparing of TDI.
