Abstract (150 Words)
The authors based this relatively large-sample, quantitative study upon Love and Sheldon’s (1998) small-sample, qualitative study in an attempt to differentiate inexperienced from experienced tourists on souvenir preference, arguing that if inexperienced tourists primarily assign meaning to souvenirs that are representative of place, they should prefer to purchase souvenirs that are representative of place and if experienced tourists are more concerned with hedonics, they should prefer non-representative, artistic souvenirs. Data were collected in ovember 2008 from cruise-ship and stay-over tourists on the island of Curaçao and analysed primarily using chi-square tests of independence to determine the influence of level of travel experience. The results were mixed and different populations of tourists were not clearly distinguished by any of the hypothesis tests. Future research that includes a larger sample size, improved grouping variables, and wider separation of samples may show more promising results.
Opinion of Inexperienced and Experienced Tourists on Curaçao Regarding Locally Produced Handcrafts
The authors based this relatively large-sample, quantitative study upon Love and Sheldon’s (1998) small-sample, qualitative study in an attempt to differentiate inexperienced from experienced tourists on souvenir preference, arguing that if inexperienced tourists primarily assign meaning to souvenirs that are representative of place, they should prefer to purchase souvenirs that are representative of place and if experienced tourists are more concerned with hedonics, they should prefer non-representative, artistic souvenirs. Data were collected in ovember 2008 from cruise-ship and stay-over tourists on the island of Curaçao and analysed primarily using chi-square tests of independence to determine the influence of level of travel experience. The results were mixed and different populations of tourists were not clearly distinguished by any of the hypothesis tests. Future research that includes a larger sample size, improved grouping variables, and wider separation of samples may show more promising results.
