489 RESEARCH NOTES AND REPORTS

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 489492, 2003

2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
0160-7383/03/$30.00
A Cross-cultural Study of Airline Passengers
Samuel Seongseop Kim
Sejong University Seoul, Korea
Bruce Prideaux
University of Queensland, Australia
A number of studies have identied the inuence of values on consumers
expectations of service standards (Donthu and Yoo 1998; Furrer, Liu and Sud-
harshan 2000; Imrie, Cadogan and McNaughton 2002; Mattila 1999). How-
ever, the views of service providers have mostly been ignored. Their role is
important as they often have to respond to customers who have conicting
expectations, reecting their professional status, income, generational group-
ing, or culture. Particularly, in an airline cabin one of the most apparent
delineators of expectations is nationality. Expectations of service standards
(Wirtz and Shamdasani 1997) and personal behavior patterns often exhibit a
cultural element that may result in varying or conicting sets of expectations
among passengers. As a consequence, ight attendants are required to demon-
strate a high level of cultural awareness, while simultaneously refraining from
imposing personal cultural interpretations on the actions of others. This study,
while adopting nationality as a method of identifying cross-cultural differences
in expectations, recognizes that nationality is not the only cause of culture
differences (Ohmae 1995) and accepts this factor as a limitation. To identify
potential strategies for enhancing satisfaction on international ights this
study examines cross-cultural differences among airline passengers from a
ight attendants perspective.
Korean Air international ight attendants were asked about their experi-
ence working with passengers from Japan, Korea, China, and the United
States. Twelve items reecting the behavior patterns of passengers belonging
to these four groups were developed from a series of structured interviews
with seven female and two male Korean Air ight attendants. Members of this
group had three or more years of service, giving them considerable experience
in observing cultural differences among passengers. A pilot study using 20
international ight attendants was conducted to validate the test items, after
which some modications were made. Three attendants were used to distrib-
ute the questionnaires to co-workers with at least two years experience. A
response rate of 84.8% was achieved from 250 questionnaires distributed. A
further 12 questionnaires were excluded because of missing data.
Respondents were asked to indicate their agreement or disagreement with
statements describing behaviors of passengers using a 7-point Likert-type scale.
Each respondent was presented a list of 12 items for each of the four national
categories. The analysis of the respondents sociodemographic characteristics
indicated a stable workforce of well-educated persons. Most of the respondents
were female (72.2%), from either the under 30 (46.4%) or 3039 year old
(46.9%) age groups. Just over half of the respondents (55.4%) had 5 or more
years experience working for Korean Air.
490 RESEARCH NOTES AND REPORTS
Table 1. Behaviors of Airline Passengers by Cultural Backgrounds (n=200)
Behavior Four Different National Groups Within- P-
Subject value
One-way
ANOVA
F-value
Japanese Korean Chinese American
Airline passengers from
tend to
1. Treat ight 5.67 3.77 3.77 3.92 232.1 .000
attendants with respect
2. Like reading books, 4.63 4.26 4.02 4.77 35.8 .000
magazines, and
newspapers
3. Stare at passengers 3.93 5.48 5.25 2.71 495.9 .000
or ight attendants
4. Follow the guidance 5.63 4.10 4.28 4.88 179.2 .000
of attendants
5. Actively complain to 3.74 4.80 4.59 5.39 193.5 .000
ight attendants about
inconvenience in a
plane
6. Show high 3.67 5.10 4.55 4.16 173.6 .000
expectation of service
quality
7. Like purchasing 5.34 5.85 4.74 2.51 325.8 .000
duty-free products
8. Write a protest letter 2.30 3.87 3.70 4.96 250.1 .000
when unsatisfactory
service is provided
9. Not express 6.16 3.19 4.00 3.55 231.7 .000
dissatisfaction when
unsatisfactory service is
given
10. Hinder work of 3.20 4.20 4.59 3.15 159.6 .000
ight attendants due to
frequent demands
11. Say thank you or 6.16 3.62 4.53 5.80 232.3 .000
express such gesture
when ight attendants
help
12. Ask for more 2.00 4.25 4.55 4.05 185.3 .000
drinking water and
food
Scale: 1=strongly disagree; 7=strongly agree.
491 RESEARCH NOTES AND REPORTS
Results were analyzed using a General Linear Model with repeated meas-
ures. This method is suitable when the same individuals are measured two or
more times for a series of continuous dependent variables (Tabachnick and
Fidell 1996). In this study, each respondent was measured four times on the
same dependent variables. Table 1 reports the results of the use of the model
with repeated measures to examine differences in behaviors of passengers
from the four national groupings. Signicant differences were observed for
all items. The results indicate a wide variety of responses that do not necessar-
ily follow any pattern except to reect the behavior of each national group
for each item. Collectively, the results indicate that there are signicant differ-
ences in behavior among the groups (Table 1). They conrm previous
research by Kim, Prideaux and Kim (2002) and others (March 1997; Pizam
and Sussman 1995).
The analysis of the specic behavior patterns of each national group indi-
cates considerable differences in areas such as duty-free purchases, expec-
tations of the availability of in-ight reading materials, and requests for
additional food and beverages. For example, Japanese passengers exhibited
the highest tendency to treat attendants with respect, and Chinese and Korean
passengers were reported to exhibit the highest tendency to hinder work of
attendants due to frequent demands. Aside from the obvious need to provide
in-ight entertainment as well as food and beverage that is appropriate for
each national group, there are discernable differences in expectations of the
level and type of services expected by each group of passengers. Thus, if spe-
cic behaviors are common to a particular nationality, airline management
should make appropriate adjustments to the level and range of services
offered to passengers, perhaps on a route-by-route basis.
From these results it is apparent that airline employees have a well-
developed sensitivity to passengers needs and this informal knowledge should
be tapped by management when designing in-ight services. Incorporating
this knowledge into the airlines formal training programs may also assist staff
to cope with air rage incidents that may arise from cultural misunderstanding
(Bor 1999) or if passengers representing national groups involved in some
form of dispute are required to sit together.
A
Samuel Seongseop Kim: Department of Hospitality & Tourism Management,
Sejong University, 98 Gunja-dong, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul 143-747, Korea. Email
<sskim@sejong.ac.kr>
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Bor, R.
1999 Unruly Passenger Behaviour and In-Flight Violence: A Psychological Per-
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Imrie, B., J. Cadogan, and R. McNaughton
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2002 A Cross-cultural Study on Casino Guests as Perceived by Casino
Employees. Tourism Management 23:511520.
March, R.
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492 RESEARCH NOTES AND REPORTS
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Tabachnick, B., and L. Fidell
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Submitted 3 April 2002. Resubmitted 8 June 2002. Accepted 8 August 2002. Final version
20 August 2002
doi:10.1016/S0160-7383(02)00111-1
CONFERENCE REPORT
Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 492494, 2003
2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
0160-7383/03/$30.00
The Tourist Historic City
Jeroen Bryon
Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium
Antonio Paolo Russo
Erasmus University RotterdamEURICUR, The Netherlands
The Tourist Historic City conference, organized by the Catholic University
of Leuven (Belgium) and the Flemish Tourist Ofce, took place March 17
12, 2002, in the Flemish historic city of Bruges. This town, with its many sight-
seeing attractions and medieval setting, is not only listed by UNESCO as a
World Heritage Site but also hosted the mega-event Cultural Capital of Eur-
ope in 2002, together with Salamanca (Spain). With its 3.2 million tourists
per year, the issue of sustainable tourism development has increasingly
become a matter of concern in Bruges. Like any other historic city, the host
city faces the challenge of integrating old and new urban functions into the
urban system of a 21
st
century regional center. Managing tensions and frictions
between conservation and innovation requires a strong and integral approach