APPRAISIVE IMAGES OF TOURIST AREAS - APPLICATION OF PERSONAL CONSTRUCTS

Personal construct theory was used to study the appraisive images held by tourists visiting the North Coast of New South Wales. In the first stage of the research, subjects produced a wide variety of constructs in differentiating between tourist places. This enabled the identification of six key evaluative constructs. In the second stage of the research, these constructs were incorporated into repertory grids that revealed how places were viewed. Principal components analysis showed that very similar images were held by tourists irrespective of age and sex, but that slight differences emerged between the images held by tourists and those held by workers in the tourist industry. The evaluative constructs identified may provide a general basis for understanding tourist perceptions.