EvaluativeImages and Tourism:
The Use of Personal Constructs to
Describe the Structure of Destination Images
D. J. WALMSLEY AND M. YOUNG
Prior research at the regional scale suggests that two
components underlie people’s evaluations of tourist destina-
arousing-sleepy and pleasant-unpleasant. A study was
undertaken to see if these dimensions also apply at the international and local levels. Although their relevance at the local level appeared to be masked by individuals’ personal experiences and knowledge, their applicability at the
international scale supports the existence of an underlying
general schema in environmental evaluation.
tions:
redress this situation by (1) arguing that there exists a common structure or schema of evaluations that can be used to
differentiate between tourism destinations and (2) reporting
the results of a study designed to test the general applicability
of the schema.
EVALUATIVE IMAGES
Evaluative
Tourism researchers have long accepted that the image
people have of the world around them has a significant influence on their travel behavior (the real world is too big and too
complex to be understood in its entirety) (Boulding 1956).
Often known as &dquo;mental maps&dquo; (Downs and Stea 1977), such
environmental images are differentiated into two sorts, depending on whether the emphasis is on the perceptual and
cognitive processing of environmental information or on the
evaluations of places. The former are called designative images and focus on the categorization of elements in the landscape, exemplified by Lynch’s (1960) work on paths, nodes,
edges, landmarks, and districts in urban images (Walmsley
and Lewis 1993). In contrast, studies of the evaluations that
individuals make of places focus on attitudes toward the environment and on the appraisal of different locations. For this
reason, they are called appraisive or evaluative images (Pocock and Hudson 1978).
In relation to travel behavior, studies of imagery are
probably best developed in the field of tourism. Indeed, the
study of destination images is a longstanding area of interest
for tourism researchers (e.g., Mayo 1973; Hunt 1975; Ehemann 1977; Crompton 1979; Pearce 1982; Gartner and Hunt
1987; Gartner 1989; Calantone et al. 1989; Echtner and
Ritchie 1993). This is not surprising, given that image assessment is crucial to the design of effective place marketing
strategies (Reilly 1990, 21). Despite this interest, image assessment is largely atheoretical, and most image studies in
tourism have used attribute lists to measure some of the more
functional components of destination image, such as scenery,
climate, facilities, and attractions (Echtner and Ritchie 1991,
1993). Thus, the main concern has been with the more tangible physical components of place perception commonly associated with designative images (Pearce 1977, 1981;
Walmsley and Jenkins 1992). The evaluative component of
images appears to have been overlooked. This article seeks to
9
images are important because of their infludiscretionary trip-making behavior (Walmsley and
Lewis 1993, pp. 215-20). They are also important because
they can serve as a basis for the marketing of places (Ashworth and Goodall 1990). There are, however, major difficulties in measuring evaluation in a rigorous manner that
captures the totality of environmental awareness without prejudging the categories into which that awareness might be
differentiated. Some early researchers equated evaluation
with preference and produced maps where the &dquo;contours&dquo; reflect desirability, the peaks indicate places that are sought after and traveled to, and the troughs designate places thought
ence on
of as unattractive and avoided (Gould and White 1974).
Despite its popularity, this approach masks the rich detail
of place-to-place variations in tourist facility provision.
Moreover, it focuses on only one dimension of environmental evaluation (preference) and therefore fails to do justice to the fact that places evoke all sorts of emotional experiences. This weakness can be overcome to some extent by
using verbal rating scales and asking subjects to score different places on such scales (Pocock and Hudson 1978), but the
trouble with this approach is that the rating scales have to be
specified in advance and thus may reflect the views of the experimenter rather than the subjects’ assessments of what is
important (Echtner and Ritchie 1991).
One way around these problems is to adopt a humanistic
approach and to empathize with the individuals under study
to see the world through their eyes (Fishwick and Vining
1992; Walmsley and Lewis 1993, pp. 113-26). The disadvanD.7. Walmsley
Ma
n professor
~ Department
Wa~M~y is
pro~~or in~ the
D~ar~M~ of
<?/~<?~Geography and Planning at the University of New England, Armidale,
NSW, Australia. M. Young is a doctoral student in the Departync~ of
ment
E~royt~~a/ Studies
~M~t~ and
anj Geography
<~
0/’ Tropical
Troptc~ Environmental
G’eogn~y at
James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
D.J.
Journal of Travel Research, Vol. 36, Winter 1998, 65-69
0 1998 Sage Publications, Inc.
Downloaded from jtr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 12, 2016
65
tage with this approach is that it tends
to
rely
on
FIGURE1
anecdotes,
rather arcane vocabulary, and produce insights that are
difficult
to verify, given that it is unclear whether two
very
independent researchers would arrive at similar interpretations of the intentionality and mind-set of the individual travelers under study.
Another way around the problem is to use personal construct theory. Basically, this is a set of techniques derived
from clinical psychology that seeks to uncover how individuals view the world while placing as few constraints as possible on the way they communicate their views. Although the
theory can be operationalized in many ways, in social science
it has been common to present the elements under study (e.g.,
travel destinations) in groups of three (triads) to subjects who
are asked to say which element is different from the other two
and why (Fransella and Bannister 1977). The reasons given
for the difference are known as constructs and are normally
expressed as bipolar scales. Thus, the approach can be used
to capture, in words, the way in which places are evaluated
against each other.
Personal construct theory has been used with success by
Walmsley and Jenkins (1993) in a study of evaluative images
in travel behavior in a coastal region of Australia. This study
identified six constructs used to evaluate places: commercializeduse a
DESTINATION LOCATION IN PERCEPTUAL
SPACE USING RUSSELL AND LANIUS’S (1984)
AFFECTIVE RESPONSE GRID
commercialized, appealing/attractive-unappealing/ unattractive, quiet-busy, trendy-not trendy, boring-interestnot
ing, and relaxed pace of life-fast pace of life. When destinations were scored by tourists on these constructs and the
resultant matrices factor analyzed, the results indicated that
two principal components accounted for 92% of the variance. Four constructs loaded highly on the first component:
fast pace of life (+0.99), busy (+0.98), commercialized
(+0.89), and trendy (+0.49). The loadings of the other constructs were less significant: interesting (+0.29) and appealing/attractive (-0.15). The labeling of principal components
is of course a notoriously subjective activity. Nevertheless,
the loadings on this component were such that Walmsley and
Jenkins (1993) labeled the component arousing-sleepy. Four
components also loaded highly on the second component, although with negative correlations: appealing/attractive
(-0.98), interesting (-0.93), trendy (-0.69), and commercialized (-0.37). The two less important constructs were busy
(-0.21) and fast (+0.11). This component was labeled
pleasant-unpleasant.
The study by Walmsley and Jenkins (1993) is noteworthy
for two reasons. First, working with tourist destinations at a
national as opposed to a regional scale, Young (1995) uncovered a set of evaluative constructs that closely corresponded
with those elicited by Walmsley and Jenkins. This not only
reinforces the reliability of the elicitation technique, but also
corroborates Walmsley and Jenkins’s findings and suggests
that the constructs are applicable to scales evaluating destinations other than regional ones. Second, the principal components identified by Walmsley and Jenkins bear a striking
resemblance to a schema proposed by psychologists working
on evaluation generally, rather than the evaluation of places
specifically. For example, a review of work on the general
structure of emotional experience has shown that two factors
come out as major evaluative dimensions: pleasantnessunpleasantness and arousal-activation (Watson and Tellegen
1985). Although much of the review was concerned with
studies of interpersonal behavior, the overall schema is applicable to evaluating environments. Acknowledging that there
66
are literally hundreds of words that can be used to describe
the emotional meaning that people attach to environments,
Russell, Ward, and Pratt (1981, p. 259) nevertheless argued
that the pleasing and arousing dimensions of environmental
experience summarize and adequately define the numerous
descriptors that are commonly used. At the heart of evaluation, then, is the circumplex model of environmental descriptors offered by Russell (1980). The key descriptors used in
this model, as suggested by Russell and Lanius (1984), can
be seen in Figure 1.
In short, studies of tourist destinations at the regional
level suggest that evaluative images are structured around
two dimensions (arousing-sleepy, pleasant-unpleasant) that
reflect the verbal descriptors used in evaluation generally. If
this is the case, then marketers have something to work
with-they can aim to project an image that differentiates
one destination from another. However, before claims can be
made about the generality of the evaluative schema set out in
Figure 1, its applicability needs to be explored at scales other
than at the regional level. To this end, a study was undertaken
of tourist destinations at local and international levels. This
choice of scales was deliberate. It enabled the study to take
account of familiarity, a factor ignored by Walmsley and
Jenkins (1993). For example, it is likely that individuals will
have a greater level of familiarity with a set of tourist destinations located in the town in which they live than with a
widely dispersed set of international destinations. Thus, to
use Gunn’s (1988) terminology, local images are likely to be
&dquo;organic&dquo; (in that they are developed through long-term assimilation of place-related information gleaned from a variety of everyday sources), whereas international images are
likely to be &dquo;induced&dquo; (i.e., influenced by active efforts to advertise and promote particular destinations). Given this, it
was expected that the results of the study would show that
evaluative images of local tourist attractions would fit the
Downloaded from jtr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 12, 2016
overall schema less well than images of international tourist
destinations because the information flows on which local
images are based are likely to be both more complex and
more
idiosyncratic.
METHODOLOGY
The study began with the six evaluative constructs identified by Walmsley and Jenkins (1993) and then sought to investigate how people scored destination choices on these
evaluative dimensions. Walmsley and Jenkins focused on
subjects who were actually involved in tourism in a place
noted for tourist activities. If the evaluative schema that they
described is to be more generally applicable, it ought to show
up in appraisals of tourist destinations given by the general
public rather than by visitors actually engaged in holiday
travel. Accordingly, the current study adopted a general
rather than a tourist sample. Specifically, the inquiry looked
at subjects in a place that is at the northern edge of the Sydney
metropolitan region, Gosford. Gosford, a city of 50,000 people that is approximately 80 km north of Sydney, is an economically diverse coastal center that is experiencing significant suburban expansion as population continues to spill
over from Sydney. It also plays an important role as a retirement center and is a tourism destination in its own right,
based largely on the area’s natural resources, especially
beaches. In short, it makes a good &dquo;laboratory&dquo; in which to
explore the structure of evaluative images, even if no claim
can be made that it is in any way representative of Australia
as a whole.
A survey was designed that asked respondents to evaluate
16 places (8 international and 8 local) on Walmsley and
Jenkins’s (1993) six bipolar constructs, using a 7-point scale.
In other words, two data sets were generated, each comprising evaluations of 8 places on six constructs. The 8 international places were chosen by selecting the 8 places most visited by Australians traveling overseas (Commonwealth of
Australia 1992): New Zealand, the United States, the United
Kingdom, Bali, Hong Kong, Singapore, Fiji, and Thailand.
Because no such comparable source was available to indicate
the local places of interest to tourists, a random survey of 28
individuals was undertaken in the Gosford area. These individuals were asked, &dquo;What do you think are the main recreation attractions that the Gosford area offers to tourists, visitors and locals?&dquo; Respondents were free to list as many
attractions as they liked. Answers to this question varied
widely and covered general environmental attractions (e.g.,
beaches, national parks), specific attractions (e.g., a reptile
park), general facilities (e.g., restaurants, shops), and sporting facilities (e.g., boating areas and golf courses). From this
list, 8 places were selected to provide a broad range of wellknown attractions: Old Sydney Town (a historic theme park),
The Reptile Park (a wildlife sanctuary and park), The Ferneries (a series of nature-based, family-oriented parks with associated facilities like barbecues and paddle boats), the Forest
of Tranquility (an area featuring short, nature-based walks),
Bouddi National Park (a large coastal park), MacMasters
Beach (an undeveloped and quiet beach), Terrigal Beach (a
highly developed, popular tourist resort), and the Central
Coast Leagues Club (a popular recreational club featuring
restaurants, bars, gambling machines, and entertainment).
It cannot be claimed that either the international places or
the local places selected for the survey are in any way representative of the entire range of tourist activities in which people indulge. However, the place selections and the manner in
which they were chosen ensure that the more popular and
therefore more well-known places were the focus of attention. Respondents were not asked whether they had direct experiences with the places under study because of the virtual
certainty that such an experience was universal at the local
level and the likelihood that it was extremely limited at the
global level.
Once the survey was developed, it was administered to a
random sample of households in the Gosford area. These
households were chosen by superimposing a linear grid over
a street map of the Gosford urban area and subsequently using a random numbers table to generate 50 points on the grid.
The household closest to each point was included in the sample. In each case, a self-administered questionnaire was left
for each member of the household older than age 13, up to a
maximum of four per household. It was up to individuals
whether they responded to the survey, and no attempt was
made to either encourage or discourage multiple returns from
a household. However, to avoid collusion between household members, respondents were asked to fill out the questionnaires independently. It was stressed that the survey was
not a test and that there were no right answers. Perusal of the
completed forms showed that the request was met in that
there was no evidence of collaboration. Completed questionnaires were collected the following day or, if they were unavailable, a reminder note was left, and a second attempt was
made a day later. Overall, the sample comprised 39 males
and 43 females. This represents an average of approximately
1.6 participants per household. Average scores were calculated for each destination on each construct and subjected to
principal components analysis (varimax rotation) in the manner used by Walmsley and Jenkins (1993).
RESULTS
The principal components analysis produced interesting
results for both international and local data sets. With positive and negative loadings on bipolar scales, a discussion of
the results can become complex. Table 1, as well as the ensuing discussion, simplifies things as much as possible by focusing on the positive pole of the six constructs (fast, busy,
commercialized, trendy, interesting, appealing) and reporting the loadings of each construct on the two principal components in this context. Significantly, for both data sets, two
components accounted for most of the variance in the data
(84% in the case of international places and 91 % in the case
of local places).
When comparing the international destinations studied
here and the regional destinations studied by Walmsley and
Jenkins (1993), the picture that emerges is one that gives encouraging support to the idea of a common evaluative
schema. The loadings on the first component were very similar. Busy, fast, commercialized, and trendy all loaded highly,
positively, and consistently. The direction of the loading for
appealing/attractive was also consistent. The only anomaly
was in regard to the direction in the sign of the loading for interesting. However, this is unimportant because of the low
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67
TABLE1
LOADINGS ON THE PRINCIPAL COMPONENTS
value of the loading. In terms of the second component, the
similarity in the pattern of loadings is again encouraging. Interesting, appealing/attractive, and trendy all loaded highly,
and low to moderate loadings attached to busy and commercialized. The fact that the direction of the loadings was reversed is inconsequential because of the bipolar nature of the
input data. The only anomaly was in relation to the construct
fast, and again this is unimportant because of the low value of
the loading.
A comparison between the evaluation of local destinations and the work of Walmsley and Jenkins (1993) produced
rather less support for the existence of a common schema.
The pattern of loadings on the first component was reasonably similar in both cases to the extent that commercialized,
busy, and fast all loaded highly, positively, and consistently.
However, appealing/attractive loaded much more highly at
the local level than at the regional level, and the direction of
the loading for interesting was changed. Even more anomalies were apparent in relation to the second component. Although commercialized and trendy loaded similarly, appealing/attractive was very much less important at the local level
than at the regional level, while busy and fast were much
more important. Moreover, the loadings of both fast and interesting changed direction.
In short, in the case of international places, the principal
components bore a striking resemblance in terms of their
loadings to those described in Figure 1 and identified by
Walmsley and Jenkins (1993). The similarity is less striking
for local places. As noted above, this anomaly at the local
level was expected and appears to confirm Gunn’s (1988)
distinction between organic and induced images. It can be inferred that individuals seem to evaluate very familiar local
areas on the basis of factors other than advertisements and
promotions. Perhaps they include experience, local knowledge, and a response to the people and activities known to be
associated with the place in question. It would therefore be
inappropriate to use the schema outlined above to differentiate between local tourist destinations. The schema can, however, be profitably used on larger scales to show how the images of destinations differ. This is demonstrated by plotting
the scores for the international destinations used in the present study on the two components of the overall schema (Figure 1). Using the descriptors devised by Russell and Lanius
(1984) and set out in the figure, the United States is seen as
exciting, while Bali, Singapore, and Hong Kong are viewed,
in turn, as increasingly arousing. Thailand is viewed negatively and is seen as unpleasant. The United Kingdom and
68
Fiji are viewed as relaxing
slightly gloomy.
and New Zealand
as
sleepy and
CONCLUSION
This article showed that, in terms of tourist destinations,
there exists a basic schema according to which places are
evaluated. In other words, people’s appraisals of destination
choices take a fairly standard form, except at the local level,
where direct experience and firsthand knowledge cause
evaluations to be made on a different basis from that used at
the regional and international levels.
The existence of a basic schema is an important finding
that is of value to those concerned with promoting tourism. It
enables marketers to see how the places for which they are
responsible are viewed relative to competitors. This is obviously a first step in designing promotional material to either
outcompete rivals or to &dquo;reposition&dquo; a destination in people’ss
cognitive imagery. The schema also has implications for segmenting tourism markets. Some segments of the market may
seek relaxing destinations, whereas others seek arousal. The
schema offers a way of deciding which destinations might
most appropriately be targeted to which segments.
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