Travel intentions of Chinese residents to Japan based on a multidimensional interactive decision tree model.

The paper is an exploratory study on the travel intentions of mainland Chinese residents to Japan after Diaoyu Island political crisis. Due to the superior location and excellent service, Japan has become one of the most popular outbound tourism destinations for Mainland Chinese tourists in the past 10 years. However, since the complicated and subtle relations between China and Japan, the tourism industry of Japan is evidently sensitive and vulnerable to various crisis. Under such circumstances,it is necessary to investigate the decision tree model research as well as compare domestic and overseas researches at the very beginning of the study. On the basis of literature review and in- depth interview with tourism operators via a three rounds of pre-test and revision, a self-completion questionnaire was developed and used to measure domestic residents' attitude and travel intentions after the Diaoyu Island political crisis. Data was collected through surveys in cities of different sizes from both developed and undeveloped areas in eastern and western China, such as Shanghai and cities in Fujian, Guizhou,Hubei, Jiangsu and Sichuan provinces. All respondents have abilities to travel to Japan economically and potentials to travel. Altogether 800 questionnaires were distributed and 756 were returned. Descriptive analysis was used to analyze the travel intention characteristics of domestic residents to Japan utilizing SPSS21.0. Four vital realities were found from the analysis. First, seeking entertainment opportunities can be the main motivation for Chinese residents travelling to Japan. Second, the family- based tour ought to be considered as the main trip mode. Third, the primary channels for tourism information dissemination include travel agencies and tourism e-commercial websites. Fourth, four to six-day staying in Japan could be proved as a suitable choice for domestic residents who prefer travelling during the national holidays and paid vacations. The CHAID decision tree model is reasonably used to analyze the differences of the intentions to travel among potential tourists in China. Based on the decision tree analysis, most citizens would choose to "cancel the travel plan"(29.0%), followed by "replace tourist destination" and "postpone the travel", yet only 19.6% would"travel as scheduled"in the light of the post impacts of Diaoyu Island political crisis. There could be no doubt that the vast majority of citizens in China lay emphasis on the macro political environment when making a travel decision. Four dominant nodes were generated in tree simulation, namely respective age, number of times to Japan, monthly income and marital status. This study has made a detailed analysis on the causes, and provides each group with tailored marketing measures eventually. Thereby, mixed measures should be implemented, including short-term and long-term plans, to recover the tourism market effectively. From the perspective of crisis decision-making and crisis marketing, this study segments the mainland Chinese citizens in order to disclose the heterogeneity and clustering features of them. The results of the study may set up a systematic foundation for better positioning potential tourists by furnishing an exploratory method for crisis management and crisis marketing.