Traveling from South to North: the relationships between historical nostalgia, novelty seeking, and attitudes to visiting North Korea

Traveling from South to North: the relationships between historical nostalgia, novelty seeking, and attitudes to visiting North Korea

The purposes of this research were: 1) to examine the effect of historical nostalgia on novelty seeking; 2) to examine the effects of historical nostalgia and novelty seeking on cognitive and affective attitudes; and 3) to examine the hierarchies of effects among three components of attitude (i.e., affective, cognitive, and behavior attitude) in the context of North Korea tourism. Based on previous studies, 8 hypotheses were derived, and two theoretical research models were proposed. The originally proposed model and its rival were tested using the data collected from 200 South Koreans. The results showed that: 1) historical nostalgia affects positively novelty-seeking, 2) novelty seeking has a full mediating effect between historical nostalgia and cognitive / affective attitudes; 3) affective attitude affects positively cognitive attitude; and 4) cognitive and affective attitudes affect significantly behavior. From a theoretical perspective, this research introduces the concept of historical nostalgia and its impact on tourist behavior. Meanwhile, from a practical perspective, it is expected that the findings of this research will contribute to the improvement of the marketing strategies of firms and governments associated with South and North Korea.