Title: Development and validation of a scale for measuring city image

Authors: Alok Acharya; Zillur Rahman

Addresses: Department of Management Studies (DOMS), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India ' Department of Management Studies (DOMS), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India

Abstract: This paper seeks to advance a valid and reliable scale for measuring the city image of Jaipur (India) from the perspective of foreign tourists especially travelled for leisure purpose. This instrument was designed in two stages. The first stage included a comprehensive literature review and qualitative interviews with academics and city administrators. The second stage involved a survey of 271 international tourists and use of quantitative techniques (i.e., EFA, CFA and SEM). The predictive validity of the proposed scale with respect to tourists' satisfaction was also analysed using SEM and it positively predicted satisfaction. The proposed scale comprised three cognitive and one affective factor with 13 items. This is a first study to propose a scale of city image in Indian context and also makes a distinctive effort to develop a scale especially focussed on foreign leisure tourists. Thus contributes significantly to existing literature.

Keywords: city image; scale development; tourism research; city branding.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2021.119465

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2021 Vol.25 No.3, pp.345 - 369

Received: 07 Nov 2018
Accepted: 26 Jul 2019
Published online: 06 Dec 2021 *

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