Relationships between Hofstede's cultural dimensions and tourist satisfaction: A cross-country cross-sample examination

Culture has been assumed to influence tourist behavior but due to the difficulty of measuring culture values directly at the individual level, the relationship between national culture and visitor satisfaction remains yet to be empirically attested. This study used two national level inbound tourist samples, i.e., Tourism Research Australia's 2017 International Visitor Survey holiday/pleasure travellers' sample and the Hong Kong Tourist Satisfaction Index Project 2016 sample, to test the relationships between Hofstede's six cultural dimensions (Power Distance, Individualism/Collectivism, Masculinity/Femininity, Uncertainty Avoidance, Long Term Orientation/Short Term Normative Orientation, and Indulgence/Restraint) and visitor satisfaction. Bivariate correlation with bootstrapping tests show consistent correlations between four of the six cultural dimensions and visitor satisfaction across the two samples. While Individualism and Indulgence are found to be positively related to visitor satisfaction, Power Distance and Long Term Orientation are negatively related to visitor satisfaction. The findings are validated with a further test involving the concept of cultural distance. This study contributes to the literature by providing solid evidence on the relation between culture and visitor satisfaction. Calls for future research are discussed.