Determinants of perceived quality of life (QOL) among older Chinese tourists

Cheng, Dan (2022) Determinants of perceived quality of life (QOL) among older Chinese tourists. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

China has the highest number of older people globally, with older tourists already accounting for 20% of all tourists, and older people have become an important part of the Chinese tourism market. Despite the growing body of research on tourism and tourists' quality of life (QoL), few studies have investigated the relationship between tourism and older tourists' QoL and clearly demonstrated the mechanisms by which each factor influences perceived QoL. This study aims to explore the determinants of perceived QoL among older Chinese tourists, adding new knowledge to the research on QoL and the relationship between tourism and QoL. Specifically, this study proposes areas of perceived QoL among older Chinese tourists through their understanding and assessment of QoL. Based on qualitative evidence from 18 interviewees, it discloses that older Chinese tourists’ access QoL through three domains: physical well-being, psychological well-being and social relationships, and also identifies travel factors that influence older Chinese tourists' QoL, including travel motivation, travel constraints, travel activities, tourism destination and travel satisfaction. This study also combines tourism research and QoL research, extending the tourism field to the wider social and health sciences research. The research identifies the determinants of perceived QoL among older Chinese tourists by integrating impact factors of tourism and domains of QoL achievements into a new research model. The proposed conceptual model was empirically evaluated using data collected from 445 participants through the survey. The results indicate that travel motivation, travel constraints, travel activities and travel satisfaction are the determinants of perceived QoL among older Chinese tourists. Physical well-being, psychological well-being and social relationships mediated the influence of the relationship between tourism and perceived QoL. This study adopts a unique-to-the-field mixed-methods strategy to create measurement scales for new exploratory constructs, pointing to a new methodological direction for future tourism research studies in the field of ageing. In addition, the findings of this study provide a reference for planning, policy development and decision-making by government, policymakers and tourism market stakeholders.

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