Tourism Experience and National Identity Case study: Residents of the City of Shiraz
Volume 14, Issue 2, Summer 2012, Pages 57-78
M. Shiani, S. Hashemi
Abstract The national identity of people is considered to constitute the highest commitment to a society and in fact, it is thought of as the core value of every citizen. Peoples' national identity is affected by history, culture, geography, religion and the like. Its existence is necessary for the making and sustaining of a nation-state. The increase of social welfare and the expansion of ICT in recent decades, have improved the possibility of traveling and communicating among people. Meanwhile, traveling, tourism experiences, and familiarity with other core values may cause the weakening or strengthening of national values. Therefore, this research aims to study the relationship of tourism experience and national identity. In this way, Erik Cohen's theory has been applied for articulation of theoretical framework. Based on this, with quantitative approach, survey method and a researcher-designed questionnaire the required data has been gathered through multistage cluster sampling among 378 residents of Shiraz. The validity of the questionnaire has been attained through face and constructed validity, and its reliability is gained by Cronbach Alpha. The gathered data at two levels of descriptive and inferential has been presented and the hypotheses of study have been examined. Among examined variables, the variables of age, external traveling, religious traveling, education, marital status, memorable traveling, quality of traveling, satisfaction of traveling, experimental and experientialexperience have had meaningful relationship with dependent variable (national identity) and internal traveling, recreational experience, gender and ethnicity have not had meaningful relationship with dependent variable (national identity). The results of multivariate regression have shown that six variables of experientialexperience (15 percent), memorable construct (5.1 percent), religious traveling (3.5 percent), external traveling (1.7 percent), quality of traveling (1.4 percent) and age (1.4 percent) have explained 28.7 percent of variation of dependent variable (national identity).