3.1 Introduction
The primary aim of this thesis is to explore the influence of personal factors such as nationality, experience of the destination and religious belief on the formation of the image of Jordan as a tourist destination. Destination image is a complex concept to measure and, therefore, using only one methodology will not capture all its components. This thesis adopts a positivist perspective to analyse common images held about Jordan. It includes a consideration of specific attributes of the destination but also incorporates open-ended questions to capture the holistic components of destination image and then quantify them to facilitate statistical comparisons (Echtner and Ritchie 1991, 2003; Jenkins 1999; Govers et al. 2007). A self-completion structured questionnaire was used to analyse potential and actual British and Swedish tourists‟ images of Jordan as a holiday destination.
A number of studies have revealed the influence of images on the behaviour of tourists and their decision making process. The literature review in chapter 2 suggests that destinations with strong or positive images are most likely to be chosen by tourists (Hunt 1975; Goodrich 1978; Woodside and Lysonski 1989; Ahmed 1991;
Ross 1993; Alhemoud and Armstrong 1996; Selby and Morgan 1996; Tasci and Gartner 2007). The importance of image as well as word-of-mouth recommendation conveyed by tourists who have visited the destination and repeat visits have been emphasised and discussed. The importance of destination image lays emphasis on the need to develop methodologies that help measure this concept rigorously (Echtner and Ritchie 1991, p.3). This chapter has nine sections including this introduction.
Sections 3.2 to 3.4 lay the theoretical background of the research paradigms, qualitative and quantitative methodologies and the methodological underpinning that might be used in destination image research. The choice of the methodology for this thesis is explained and justified in section 3.5 and the research process of this thesis is explained in section 3.6. Section 3.7 explains how the research has been implemented
in terms of population and sample; the design of the questionnaire; the response rates of the questionnaire; analysis of the questionnaire; and the validity and reliability of the research. Section 3.8 details the limitations of this research and, finally, Section 3.9 concludes this chapter.
3.2 Theoretical paradigms to destination image
10Table 3.1: Summary of positivist and phenomenological paradigms
Positivism Paradigm Phenomenology Paradigm
Basic beliefs World is external and objective
Observer is independent
Science is value free
World is socially constructed and subjective
The observer is part of what is observed
Science is driven by human interests
The researcher
Try to understand what is happening
Construct theories and models from the data (inductive approach)
Methods include Operationalising concepts so that they can be measured. Source: Gray (2004 after Easterby-Smith et al. 1991)
The dominant philosophies in social science research are positivism and phenomenology. A positivist paradigm dominates tourism research as it explains the cause and effect relationship in tourist behaviour (Han et al. 1997; Echtner & Ritchie 1991, 1993; Jenkins 1999; Prayag and Ryan 2010). It also reduces the bias that might be imposed by the researcher, as in the case of phenomenological approach. In addition, the positivist or quantitative approach facilitates statistical comparison between the study variables (Finn et al. 2000; Jennings 2001; Echtner and Ritchie 2003; O‟Leary and Deegan 2005). The positivist approach was first introduced in 1930s and was dominant from then until the 1960s (Gray 2004, p.20). This approach assumes that scientific laws to explain the phenomena through causal relationship between its variables govern the world. Veal (2006) explains positivism as the approach in which phenomena (or people) are studied without the involvement of the
10 „A paradigm is a set of beliefs, assumptions and values that underline the way various perspectives interpret reality‟ (Jennings 2001, p.443).
researcher inside the phenomena, but by his/her observation and facts gathered from that population. Crotty (1998 cited Gray 2004, p.18) and Bryman (2008, p.13) indicate that when adopting the positivist approach (i.e. an epistemological philosophy)11, the research results are said to be objective and focus on facts not values; therefore, the researcher tends to adopt quantitative methods to realise the research objectives. The limitation of this approach is that observation is limited and many areas of science are not based on observation; but they do start from theory and establish a ground for observations. Phenomenology, on the other hand, means that people describe the phenomena according to their experience to produce meaningful results. The phenomenological approach is based on the presumption that people‟s experience is the key to understanding the world‟s phenomena to produce their meaning of looking at the social reality and, therefore, qualitative approaches are used (Creswell 2009).
The differences between the two main traditions, positivism and phenomenology, are documented in Table 3.2 above. A positivist approach to destination images entails that a destination is an amalgam of different common attribute-based components that can be only captured using a quantitative method such as a self-completion questionnaire. Destination image is a complex and subjective personal perception and evaluation of destination attributes that cannot really be measured (i.e. holistic and unique images) and is best explored by qualitative interviews (Ryan 2000; Jennings 2001; Prayag and Ryan 2010). The phenomenological approach to destination image then is used to gain a deeper understanding of the common attributes that constitute a general conceptualisation of an image of a destination and the meaning given by respondents to those attributes (Govers et al. 2007). Phenomenology is „grounded in the subjective meaning that social actors construct to explain their social reality‟
(Jennings 2001, p.159). Bouma (1996 cited Jennings 2001, p.159) explains that the phenomenological approach „focuses on the way people interpret the actions of others, how they make sense of events and how, through communication, they build worlds of meaning‟. Very few studies measured destination image using the phenomenological approach or qualitative methodology; these include Reilly (1990);
11 Epistemology is a philosophy or a theory of knowledge that is concerned with questions of what is (or should be) and how (e.g. what is knowledge; how is it acquired; what do people know; and how they know what they know (Bryman 2008).
Dann (1996) and Guthrie (2007). This implies that the majority of destination images studies were based on a quantitative methodology or a positivist approach until 1996 (Riley and Love 2000). The positivist approach is not concerned about people‟s experience and meaning they give to express their behaviour; it just concerns what people say not why and how they perceive the image attributes (Guthrie 2007).
Therefore, the phenomenological approach to destination image is very important to explaining tourists‟ experiences and telling their stories about the destination as well as to give insights and meaning to their behaviour.
Nevertheless, these two philosophies are not mutually exclusive and no one method is valid for all cases of research. Thus, the choice between whether to use a positivist approach or a phenomenologist approach relates to the research aim and objectives.
Easterby-Smith et al. (1991), argue that the choice also is dependent on other important factors, namely, validity, reliability and generalisability12. As a result, the drawbacks of one method can be overcome by adopting a mixture of both positivist and phenomenologist methods (i.e. quantitative and qualitative methods). This thesis adopts a positivist approach to measure the attribute-based components of Jordan‟s images and incorporates open-ended questions to capture the holistic components of that. Therefore, using only one method means some components of image will not be measured easily; for example, quantitative methodology does not incorporate holistic components of destination image, whereas a qualitative methodology cannot measure the common and attribute-based components of destination image. A quantitative methodology is attribute-focused through structured or given attributes by the researcher while qualitative methodology gives respondents freedom to think and state the images pertinent to them not to the researcher. On the other hand, qualitative methodology does not facilitate comparative and statistical analysis of the results (Table 3.2, Section 3.3 below).
12 Validity means that the instrument measures what it is supposed to measure, reliability shows how consistence and stable is the measurement instrument and generalisability is the applicability of research findings in one setting to others (Jennings 2001).