Bryman & Bell (2007: 28, 402) stress that qualitative research possesses the following features:
It can be construed as a research strategy that tends to be concerned with words rather than quantification in the collection and analysis of data;
It predominantly emphasizes an inductive approach to the relationship between theory and research;
An epistemological position described as interpretivist stresses the understanding of the social world through an examination of the interpretation of what world by its participants; and
An ontological position described as constructionist, which implies that social properties are outcomes of the interactions between individuals.
Indeed, qualitative research is concerned typically with information in the form of words, conveyed orally or in writing, images and sounds (Veal 2011: 35). Five qualitative approaches are included in qualitative research: narrative research, phenomenological research, grounded theory research, ethnographic research, and case study research (Creswell 2013: 83).
As is well known, case studies have been widely used in tourism research (Beeton 2005; Finn, Elliott-White & Walton 2000; Veal 2011). Veal (2011: 128) stresses that ‘a case study involves the study of an example – a case – of the phenomenon being
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researched. The aim is to seek to understand the phenomenon by studying a single example’. Bryman & Bell (2007: 63) further explain that ‘with a case study, the case is an object of interest in its own right, and the researcher aims to provide an in-depth elucidation of the unique features of the case’.
According to the statement above, therefore, this research is identified as case study research. As discussed in Chapter 1, although the Chinese government insists that the construction of the Three Gorges Dam will be beneficial to the development of China’s economy, the Dam has been considered as a self-induced crisis from the perspective of western media and some experts, a crisis which has been directly or indirectly reflected in many ways, such as impacts on the ecological environment, environmental pollution, the displacement of local people, and impacts on Three Gorges tourism. Nevertheless, unlike other cases, such crisis is predictable and its impacts can be minimized if Chinese government takes effective measurements in time. Additionally, during the construction of the Dam, the development of the Three Gorges tourism experienced a series of challenges. In particular, the misleading reports from Taiwan media (see Chapter 5) resulted in significant fluctuations of the number of tourists in the region as well as a long-term trough in the development of Three Gorges tourism. Thus, it can be argued that this case will contribute not only to contemporary tourism crisis management theory and models, but also the tourism in China literature (See Chapter 1).
With regard to its classification, whether or not the case study method should be subsumed under ‘qualitative methods’ has been long debated. For example, Creswell (2013: 83) and Finn, Elliott-White & Walton (2000: 81) point out that the case study method belongs to qualitative research. However, such classification was questioned by Bryman & Bell (2007), Veal (2011) and Yin (2009). In particular, Yin (2009: 19) argues that ‘the case study method is not just a form of ‘qualitative research’…. Some case study research goes beyond being a type of qualitative research by employing a mix of quantitative and qualitative evidence. In addition, case studies need not always include the direct and detailed observational evidence marked by other forms of ‘qualitative research’’. Indeed, this case study, related to the Three Gorges Dam, has employed a mix of quantitative and qualitative evidence (more detail can be found in Section 6.4).
Nevertheless, the case study has its limitations. For example, ‘it has been broadly criticized as speculative, unreliable and too specific to be replicated or applied
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generally. More importantly, it has also been argued that case studies tend to reflect the bias of the researcher, who is the primary instrument of data collection and analysis’ (Beeton 2005: 38-39). However, Creswell (1994) claims that some of the criticisms related to the bias of the researcher may be overcome through the use of ‘triangulation’. In other words, by combining qualitative and quantitative methods in a case study, some inherent bias would be neutralized and then a better result could be achieved. Indeed, multiple methods, including documentary research, the use of secondary data, different type of interviews, and questionnaire-based or qualitative surveys, can be used in a case study approach, which make the research more valid and reliable.
However, apart from the limitations mentioned above, it should be noted that the case study approach also has its advantages, such as the ‘capacity to explore social processes as they unfold in organizations’ (Finn, Elliott-White & Walton 2000: 82), ‘providing a richness and uniqueness in data by using multiple methods, namely triangulation’ (Veal 2011: 348), and so on (More details can be found in APPENDIX 3).
There are many techniques associated with qualitative methods: qualitative interviewing, participant observation, focus groups, verbal protocol analysis, and the collection and qualitative analysis of texts and documents (Bryman & Bell 2007). Through the application of one or more of these techniques, researchers can either ‘gain…insights into people (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe & Lowe 2002)’, ‘explore people’s life histories or everyday behavior (Silverman 2005: 6)’, or ‘seek an understanding of actions, problems and processes in the social context (Phillimore & Goodson 2004: 3)’. In short, through qualitative techniques, researchers seek to understand the social world.
Qualitative interviewing is considered as ‘a great way to learn detailed information from a single individual or small number of individuals. It is very useful when one wants to gain expert opinions on the subject or talk to someone knowledgeable about a topic’ (Driscoll & Brizee 2010). Nevertheless, there are two major types of qualitative interviewing: the semi-structured interview and the unstructured interview.
As Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill (2003) point out, ‘the semi-structured interview is used in qualitative research in order to conduct discussions not only to reveal and understand the ‘what’ and the ‘how’, but also to place more emphasis on exploring the ‘why’’. Bryman & Bell (2007: 479) also suggest that ‘if the researcher is beginning the
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investigation with a fairly clear focus, rather than a very general notion of wanting to do research on a topic, it is likely that the interview will be semi-structured one, so that the more specific issues can be addressed’. As Bryman & Bell (2007: 474) further explain, the researcher usually has an interview guide with a list of questions on a specific topic. However, questions may not follow on exactly in the way outlined on the schedule. Also questions that are not included in the guide may be asked as the interviewer picks up on things said by interviewees. In this research, semi-structured interviews were adopted to explore and understand the perceptions of the supply side (that is, the governments / relevant authorities) and demand side (international visitors) on the negative impacts of the Dam.
Compared with the semi-structured interview, if the researcher wants to ‘gain a genuine understanding of the world views of members of a social setting or of people sharing common attributes, the unstructured interviewing approach may be preferable’ (Bryman & Bell 2007: 477). It is considered that with a more unstructured approach, the researcher is more likely to see things as the participants see them (Bryman & Bell 2007: 477, 479). Conducting an unstructured interview with the tour guide in this research provided the researcher with an alternative means of further exploring the perceptions of international visitors on the Three Gorges and the Dam, as well as eliciting a genuine insight into how the tour guide recognized and understood the impacts of the Dam on the development of Three Gorges tourism.
To sum up, qualitative research has its advantages, but there is also consensus on the limitations of qualitative research (Bryman & Bell 2007; Flick 2009; Veal 2011): first, it is too subjective; second, it is difficult to replicate, particularly in case studies; third, there are problems of generalization; and fourth, it lacks transparency.