Cultural Effects on Inbound Tourism into the USA: A Gravity Approach

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Abstract:In this paper we discuss the effects of cultural -and particular religious -factors on tourist flows into the USA as the world largest tourism destination. To estimate this empirically we run an augmented gravity equation. Our results give evidence that the gravity equation is an adequate instrument to explain variations in international tourist flows. With respect to the aim of the paper, we have found that cultural proximity between country of origin and country of destination have positive effects on the tourism flows between these countries. In particular, after controlling for a set of geographic variables, people from countries with the same language (English) and the same high governmental rankings like the USA, travel more into the USA for holiday than people from other countries. Above all, we have clear and stable evidence that tourists from Christian countries prefer the USA as holiday destination much stronger than people from other countries. This supports our argument that people wishing to go on holiday to countries with a similar cultural and political background.

What's Pushing International Tourism Expenditures?

“…Similar results are displayed by some studies dealing with this issue using gravity models (e.g. Eilat and Einav 2004, Kimura and Lee 2006, Gil-Pareja et al 2007, Phakdisoth and Kim 2007, and Vietze 2008.…”

“…Therefore, the fourth hypothesis claims that good governance is positively correlated with tourism receipts per capita (similar Phakdisoth and Kim 2007;Vietze 2008). Besides the tautological effect that freedom to travel is an immediate outcome of political freedom, we argue that good institutions in the country of origin can obtain people to travel in foreign countries as they can be sure that their property's (and -of course -relatives) are in a good order when returning.…”

“…Thus, an adjusted OLS-estimator robust to heteroskedasticity (White 1980) Wei and Frankel (1997), we endeavor to estimate the exact effects of geographical variables that are time constant. The inclusion of country dummies will undermine these efforts; because the time-constant geographical variables are hidden from analysis as they are subsumed into the fixed effects (see also Vietze, 2008). Moreover, due to data availability it is impossible to construct a relevant time series.…”

Cultural offer and distance in a spatial interaction model for tourism

“…The relevance of cultural offer/endowment for tourism has been investigated widely: some studies suggest that cultural heritage and attractions are major tourism drivers (e.g., Herbert, 2001;Vietze, 2008), also because of their uniqueness and difficult transferability (Dritsakis, 2004); other studies do not find cultural sites and attractions to effectively attract tourists (see, e.g., Cuccia and Cellini, 2007). Similar contradictory results are found, for example, for externally certified attractions, such as UNESCO's World Heritage sites (WHS).…”

Exploring the Nexus Between Tourism Demand and Cultural Similarity

“…These imply countries with similar culture may engage more in tourism. Consequently, more and more empirical research in recent years (e.g., Crotts, 2004;Ng, Lee, & Soutar, 2006;Seetanah, Durbarry, & Ragodoo, 2010;Vietze, 2012) have incorporated some form of cultural factor into their models.…”