Destination branding is growing rapidly as an approach to tourism destination promotion. While this concept has been borrowed from the world of general consumer goods and applied in a number of national tourism destinations, academic analysis of the value and effectiveness of destination branding has emerged more slowly. The present article addresses this paucity of academic scrutiny by examining the value of the destination brand personality construct in distinguishing between two regional tourism destinations. A survey of 480 tourists was conducted adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef in Northern Australia to gather data about the destination image attributes of two regional destinations that were branded by a state destination marketing organization. The results indicated that tourists were able to articulate different destination brand personalities for each region. The results also indicated that more work might need to be done to adapt existing frameworks of brand personality to the tourism context.
Ruiqi Deng is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland. His research interests are MOOCs, online learning environment design and technology-enhanced learning. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Queensland and a master's degree from Department of Education, University of Oxford. Pierre Benckendorff is an associate professor at the University of Queensland. His research interests are tourism education and scholarship, tourism information technology, and visitor behaviour. He has authored over 90 publications in these areas in leading international journals and is a regular speaker at tourism and higher education research conferences. Deanne Gannaway is a senior lecturer at the University of Queensland. Her research interests are curriculum design, educational evaluation and teaching innovation. She is the program coordinator for professional learning in teaching and is regularly invited to facilitate workshops and seminars across Australasia and beyond.
AbstractThe purpose of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the complexity of conceptualising and measuring learner engagement in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The paper develops and validates a MOOC engagement scale (MES) to measure learner engagement. The initial questionnaire items of the scale were developed by reviewing existing related literature and validated student engagement constructs. This was followed by a modified scale development process, including two focus group interviews (n = 10), an exploratory survey (n = 12), an expert review (n = 10), a pilot survey (n = 15), an item purification study (n = 590) and a construct validation study (n = 303). The final version of the scale is made up of four dimensions: behavioural engagement, cognitive engagement, emotional engagement and social engagement. The paper concludes with recommendations for how the MES can be used to assess the pattern of engagement in MOOCs and to investigate the relationship between learner engagement and other important MOOC teaching and learning factors.
InstructionThink about a MOOC you enrolled in and keep this MOOC in mind when answering all the questions. Indicate to what extent you agree with the statements on a 6-point Likert scale:
ABSTRACT. Despite a growing body of work on destination branding, there has been little inves-tigation of whether or not tourists attribute brand personality characteristics to tourism destinations and whether or not an emotional connection exists based on tourists ’ perceived self-image and the ‘brand personality ’ of destinations. The aim of this study is to explore the links among four key constructs proposed for the destination branding and choice process–tourist needs, destination brand personality, self-congruity, and intentions to visit and satisfaction with a visit. The results in-dicate that where tourists can make an association between a destination and a destination brand personality, and where this association is consistent with their desired holiday experience, a high level of congruity will exist between the tourists ’ self-image and their perceptions of the destina-tion. In turn this self-congruity was related to satisfaction with a visit to the destination but not to intention to travel to the destination.doi:10.1300/J073v22n02_04 [Article copies available for a fee fro
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