An analysis of perceived Social distance Effect on Behavioral Intention of Inbound Tourists to Kish Island, Considering Perceived Risk and Satisfaction

Tourism industry is considered as one of the biggest and most diverse service-providing industries in the world. Given the economic importance of the tourism industry, identification of barriers to attract tourists and to gain market share become worthy of notice. Here, then, the social distance perceived by tourists to with local residents as a barrier to attract tourists is considered as the subject of this article to be investigated. . Due to the existence of cultural differences, tourists’ perceptions or attitudes toward different social matters are different from those of natives, and this may lead to social distance. Therefore, the main goal of this study was to analyze the effects of perceived social distance on behavioral intentions of international tourists who had visited Kish Island, at the southern part of Iran- with a focus on the perceived risk and tourists’ satisfaction. Social distance explains the cooperative behaviour and sympathetic understanding that exists between people (Sinkovics & Penz, 2009).Social distance is defined in terms of the affective distance between group members. ‘‘Where there is little sympathetic understanding, social farness exists. Where sympathetic understanding is great, nearness exists’’(Matear,2014).Thus, positive views of residents regarding tourists and well-functioning relationships between tourists and residents, together with low levels of social distance are key ingredients to sustaining continuous visits, promote return visitation and stimulate demand for tourist destination(Sinkovics & Penz, 2009). Since the perceived social distance affects tourists’ satisfaction from their visit, reducing this perceived distance can help to develop tourism industry. Also, it needs to be mentioned that the concept of “social distance” in tourism has been less noticed, especially on Iran, and this paper seeks to fill this research gap. So, this paper seeks for an answer to whether the social distance perceived by foreign tourists in the Kish Island has affected their satisfaction from their trip as well as their behavioral intentions for repeating their trip to this region.
Material & In the present study, a group of international tourists who had a trip to the Kish Island were chosen as the statistical population. Stratified Random Sampling was used for tourists’ selection of three famous neighborhoods named Daamoun-e Saaheli, Sadaf and Seffeyn. Considering Cochran's formula, 296 questionnaire forms for evaluating respondents’ responses were used. The statistical data were analyzed properly after measuring the variables.The data were collected using a self-adminstered questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaire was evaluated using content and face validity, and its reliability was measured to be 84% by using Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient. . The collected data were analyzed by SPSS and LISREL software through statistical tests performed in two levels of “descriptive” (frequency, percent, mean and standard deviation) and “inferential” (structural equation modeling, t-test associated with level of significance, comparative t-tests and variance analysis).
Discussion of Results & The results proved that reducing the perceived social distance will be led to increased satisfaction of tourists. The effect of the social distance on the amount of the perceived risk was also investigated in this study. The results showed that by increasing the social distance led to increased amount of tourists’ perceived risk. The reason lies behind the increased mistrust due to low intimacy feeling between tourists and native residents. The effect of satisfaction level on behavioral intentions was also evaluated. The results showed that tourists’ intentions for repeating their trip to the region increased as their satisfaction level increased. The effect of perceived risk on behavioral intentions was also studied. The results proved tourists’ intentions for repeating their trip to the region decreased as their perceived risk level increased. In addition, the effect of social distance on behavioral intentions was independently investigated in the present research. The results proved no effect of social distance on behavioral intentions- that is, social distance, by itself, could not affect tourists’ behavioral intentions or willing to come back to the destination, without taking perceived risk and satisfaction level into consideration. The rejection of this hypothesis in the present study and in the statistical population of the Kish Island is due to the fact that cultural differences and lock of social relations between native residents and tourists are not the only factors that had influenced tourists’ decision about repeating their trip to the region- if not saying that this social difference some time could even attract more tourism. The effect of perceived risk on tourists’ satisfaction level was studied in this research. The results showed that the lower level of perceived risk would increase tourists’ satisfaction level.