ISSN: 2222-6990
Open access
With the impact of globalisation on China, many world-renowned branded theme parks have entered China and gained high popularity. Among these, female tourists have become the primary consumer group, initiating a new tourist experience consumption trend. The new characteristics of female identity developed in this process reflect an important development of contemporary China. Thus, this study takes Shanghai Disneyland, the most representative theme park, as an example to explore this phenomenon. This paper using content analysis, 170 short videos on Douyin which is the most popular social media in China are collected, Through coding the categories of female tourist experiences in video content and captions, the characteristics of female tourists' experiences at Shanghai Disneyland and the identity traits they wish to showcase are clearly demonstrated. Furthermore, through the tourist gaze to analysis how the construction of female identity with contemporary Chinese development. The study primary finds that in contemporary Chinese theme park, the tourist gaze constructs the identity characteristics of contemporary female tourists, utilizing thematic symbols to construct individual female identities?and this construction is passive. These related tourist experiences indicate that while female identity is rising in consumer culture, it remains in a state of being gazed at and constructed in the eyes of contemporary Chinese tourists. In the future, this research could be further extended, primarily to study consumer culture in theme parks, to help large multinational cultural companies understand how to enter the Chinese market and the impact of local female consumer habits on marketing strategies for foreign enterprises.
Carr, R. (2004). Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World. Journal of American Folklore, 117(463), 109-110.
China. (2021). Zhonggongzhongyang Guowuyuan Guanyuyou Huashengyu Zhengce Cujinrenkou Changqijunhengfazhan De Juedingtongzhi ????? ????????????????????????????”?Decision of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council on Optimizing the Birth Policy to Promote Long-Term Balanced Population Development?. Retrieved June 14 from https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengceku/2021-07/30/content_5628356.htm
Clintock, A. M. (1995). Imperial Leather.
Desmond, J. (1999). Staging tourism: Bodies on display from Waikiki to Sea World. University of Chicago Press.
Eco, U. (1986). Travels in hyper reality: Essays. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Galvez, C. M. (2018). Authentically Disney, distinctly Chinese: a case study of glocalization through Shanghai Disneyland’s brand narrative.
Heidegger, M. (2006). Building dwelling thinking. Spaces of visual culture. London, Routledge, 66-76.
Hochschild, A. R. (2019). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California press.
Hormazabal, C. (2001). Bauman, Zygmunt (2000) Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. 2000. Athenea Digital: revista de pensamiento e investigación social, 10.
Jordan, F., & Aitchison, C. (2008). Tourism and the sexualisation of the gaze: Solo female tourists’ experiences of gendered power, surveillance and embodiment. Leisure Studies, 27(3), 329-349.
Larsen, J. (2014). The Tourist Gaze 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. The Wiley Blackwell companion to tourism, 304-313.
Veijola, S., & Jokinen, E. (1994). The body in tourism. Theory, culture & society, 11(3), 125-151.
Warhurst, C., Nickson, D., Witz, A., & Marie Cullen, A. (2000). Aesthetic labour in interactive service work: Some case study evidence from the ‘new’Glasgow. Service Industries Journal, 20(3), 1-18.
Wearing, B., & Wearing, S. (1996). Refocussing the tourist experience: The flaneur and the choraster. Leisure Studies, 15(4), 229-243.
(Fan et al., 2024)
Fan, W., Isa, W. M. B. M., & Raja, H. R. F. B. (2024). Exploring the Female Tourists’ Identity in Contemporary Chinese Theme Parks Tourism. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 14(8), 532–544.
Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s)
Published by HRMARS (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode