The Impact Of Television On One’s Travel Preference

Introduction

Nowadays, the entertainment industry around the world is very flourishing, especially in the drama aspect. Take Korea as an example, many people are mainly acknowledged on Korea from Television (Kim, Kim, Agrusa & Lee, 2012). It changes one’s view of the country shown in the drama by exporting their culture such as food. The experiment is designed for testing the hypothesis “one’s travel preference would be affected by the food shown in the popular drama”. The hypothesis is made because of the rising of film tourism which means “the growing interest and demand for locations which became popular due to their appearance in films and television series” (Tomala K. , Faber F. , 2011, p. 149).

Method

The independent variable (IV) of the experiment is the “the food shown in popular dramas”. The dependent variable (DV) is “one’s travel preference” and the operational definition of the DV is the priority of countries ranked by the participants.

Random sampling will be used to minimize sampling bias. 360 people of different ages and gender will be selected from 18 districts. The same amount of people will be selected from each district to ensure that the probability of the person being selected is the same. Zim (2017) finds that gender and age do not strongly affect the reason of watching drama so the gender and the age of the participants are not controlled. One requirement for choosing participants is that they must be Hong Kong people. The experimental group will watch a popular Korean drama “My Love from the Star” that hitting 1. 3 billion hits with mainland internet viewership (Yan, 2014). Combination of Korean-style fried chicken and beer, ramen, etc. are frequently shown in the drama. The control group will watch another Korean drama “Descendants of the Sun” which has hit 2 billion of views. Food is seldom shown in this drama. The 5 countries for the participants to rank include China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia. These countries are chosen because they are popular countries for Hong Kong people.

The confounding variable is the Korean celebrities. Korean celebrities may be one of the reasons affecting the intention of participants travelling to Korea. Therefore, both chosen dramas have famous actors and actress. Procedures First, after selecting enough number of people (i. e. 20 people) for participation in each district using random sampling. Agreement of participation will be requested.

Then, after random assignment, the experimental group and the control group will be arranged to watch the different dramas in different rooms. The experimental group will watch ‘My Love from the Star” and the control group will watch “Descendants of the Sun”. They need to come back to the room every day. It avoids any skipping or fast-forward of the drama. They are required to watch two episodes each day in a row to finish all episodes. After finishing the drama, both groups of participants are required to rank 5 countries. The percentage of Korea being ranked in the first and second place will be calculated. Also, they will be informed about the objective of this experiment. The personal information of the participants will be kept confidential.

Conclusion

The rank of the countries positively relates to the image of a country and thus travel preference. The higher the priority is the country shown in the drama (i. e. Korea), the higher the intention to travel to Korea the participants are. If the percentage of Korea being ranked in the first and second place in the experimental group is higher than that in control group, this means watching a popular drama positively affect one’s travel preference by exporting culture such as food.