At present, the development of inbound tourism has become an important issue of tourism policy in Japan, since the population decrease, low birth rate and aging population problem make it difficult to expand the domestic demand. Therefore, in order to obtain some basic information about ways to attract a large number of Chinese tourists in the future, we took Chinese and Japanese students as subjects and conducted a landscape evaluation experiment with text information. By comparing the results of psychological evaluation experiments of Chinese and Japanese students between the two conditions of “only image” and “text + image”, the different influence of text information on the evaluation of landscape images due to the difference of knowledge and experience is clarified.
The following conclusions can be drawn from the study.
● For most landscapes, the evaluation of “Willingness to visit” in the “text + image” mode had a higher evaluation than the “only image” mode in case of Japanese students like Chinese students, even though they have more knowledge or experience. In addition, Japanese students are less likely to change the way they perceive “Likeness of Japan” by adding text information.
● According to the correlation coefficients between the comprehensive evaluation items, for both Chinese and Japanese students, “Likeness of Japan” was not related to “Willingness to visit” in the “only image” mode, while, there was such relationship in the “text + image” mode for Chinese students.
● The factor analysis was applied to the data combined the image evaluation of four subject groups. Based on the pairs of bipolar adjectives with high factor loadings, factor one to four extracted were interpreted as “Inherency”, “Openness”, “Harmony” and “Traditionality” respectively. According to the results of multiple regression analysis, in two modes, Japanese students have lower determination of coefficients than Chinese students, who are familiar with the landscape. This reason is considered that they have a unique evaluation criterion different from that of Chinese students.
● SEM analysis showed that the biggest difference between Chinese and Japanese students was the influence of “Japanese characteristics” on “Preference”. For Japanese students, “Inherency” affected “Preference” directly in two modes, while for Chinese students, “Inherency” affected “Preference” indirectly through “Japanese characteristics” in the “text + image” mode more than the "only image" mode.
From the results, the similarities and differences between Chinese and Japanese students were obtained. Especially for Chinese students, in the “text + image” mode, the text information of the tourism landscape might have affected the evaluation positively. In the future, it will be necessary to clarify that what kind of text contents can reflect the “Inherency” of landscape better.
