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Researching Chinese tourists on the move
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-20, 03:12 authored by Yue MaYue Ma, Anne HardyAnne Hardy, Can Seng OoiCan Seng OoiTime is scarce for most tourists. This posts challenges for fieldworkers when conducting face-to-face interviews with them. This is particularly pertinent to Chinese tourists. This paper explores the use of the social media app WeChat for mitigating the time pressures faced by researchers and tourists as subjects. Hugely popular in China, WeChat has rarely been explored within the literature as a tool for data collection. This paper addresses this dearth by taking an ethnographic approach and using our experiences and reflections on the multiple challenges we faced, particularly, but not exclusively on the limited time of Chinese travelers in Tasmania, Australia. This paper contributes to tourism methodology by critically assessing the potential use of WeChat for researchers. It extends the understanding of using social media as tools for qualitative data collection, and simultaneously considers the enhancement of the researcher’s wellbeing.
History
Publication title
Journal of China Tourism ResearchVolume
16Pagination
214-229ISSN
1938-8160Department/School
TSBEPublisher
RoutledgePlace of publication
United StatesRights statement
Copyright 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupRepository Status
- Restricted