Destination Image and Subjective Well-Being Students

DESTINATION IMAGE AND SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING STUDENTS FROM OUTSIDE YOGYAKARTA

Yogyakarta is known as the city of education in addition to a tourism city. Therefore Subjective Well-Being (SWB) of the students are from outside Yogyakarta is very important to note the increase in the number of tourists visiting Yogyakarta. The purpose of this study is to answer the question of whether there is a relationship between Destination Image (DI) with SWB students who are from outside Yogyakarta. This study uses data collection DI scale and the scale of SWB. The subjects are 105 students Mercu Buana Yogyakarta University consist of 62 women and 43 men. By using statistical analysis of product moment correlation technique can be concluded that there is a relationship between Destination Image and SWB on students from outside Yogyakarta.

Keywords: Tourism City, Subjective Well-Being (SWB), Destination Image (DI), Students are from outside Yogyakarta.

Introduction

The beginning of each new school year, Yogyakarta visited by thousands of new residents who come from almost all parts of Indonesia and foreign countries. This is because Yogyakarta is a place known as the city of education, so it's natural that many high school graduates who can dream of enjoying the process of learning in Yogyakarta. Yogyakarta in addition known as the education city is also known as the city of Yogyakarta tourism because many attractions are favored by migrants from Indonesia and abroad. Therefore, efforts to make the prospective students from outside Yogyakarta, come and study in Yogyakarta is also an effort to increase the number of tourists visiting Yogyakarta. Students from outside Yogyakarta can also be categorized as a tourist with a long stay in Yogyakarta is not only a matter of days but a few years for them to take the course in Yogyakarta. Efforts to increase the number of tourists visiting Yogyakarta is necessary because this is the success of Vision launched by the city of Yogyakarta in the document Long Term Development Plan 2005-2025, namely: "the city of Yogyakarta as a city quality education and as a city-based Cultural Tourism, and Services Service Center, Environmental " (Dinas Pariwisata Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta, 2013).

To support the vision of Yogyakarta, an important point that needs to be studied is to know why the prospective students from outside the city of Yogyakarta would choose college in the city of Yogyakarta. The research looked at the case of efforts to improve SWB students who are from outside Yogyakarta. Due to the high SWB someone will show a good quality of life as well. According to Diener (1998), individuals who have a high quality of life will feel the happiness, well-being and satisfaction in life.

In the context of the tourism business, customer satisfaction can be aligned with SWB someone is always regarded as an important goal, because some studies have shown that satisfied customers will buy more and then have a destination loyalty (Oppermann 2000). The degree of tourists' loyalty to a destination is reflected in their intentions to revisit the destination and in their willingness to recommend it (Oppermann 2000). Tourists' positive experiences of service, products, and other resources provided by tourism destinations could produce repeat visits as well as positive word-of-mouth effects to friends and / or relatives. Recommendations by previous visits can be taken as the most reliable information sources for potential tourists. Furthermore, it can be predicted that the DI will affect SWB person as defined by Chon (1990), Echtner and Ritchie (1991), Baloglu and McCleary (1999a), that it has been widely acknowledged that DI affects tourists' subjective perception, consequent behavior and destination choice.

This study aims to answer the question: Is there a relationship between DI Yogyakarta with SWB students who are from outside Yogyakarta? If this research can prove the existence of such a relationship it is necessary to attempt to improve the DI Yogyakarta in the eyes of all the people of Indonesia and the World, so that the students who are from outside Yogyakarta can have high SWB. Due to the high SWB related to student satisfaction to its destination. This is what will make the students will be happy to disseminate information about the city of Yogyakarta and invites his friends to come stay in Yogyakarta.

Subjective well-being

SWB is a topic that is often discussed by experts in the past twenty years. According to Diener (1984) notion of SWB can be categorized in three groups, namely the first SWB is defined as something that is outside the individual, such as chastity, virtue, and wisdom. Definition of SWB is not an individual but a norm adopted by the culture. Feelings of SWB is determined by how the norms that apply to most people in a society, so that happiness according Tatarkietwict (1976) is a success because it has to meet certain standards-standards set by society. The second view is triggered by the scientist questions about what causes a person to evaluate themselves in a positive state or comfortable? The definition of SWB is associated with feelings of satisfaction with life. Shin & Johnson (in Diener, 1984) defines happiness as a global assessment of quality of life according to his chosen criteria. A third view happiness comes from everyday sense, namely that defines happiness or SWB as more positive feelings seem to happen in his life rather than negative feelings. This definition emphasizes the experience into a positive or negative feelings have ever experienced so far.

In this study, SWB is a construct that reflects an understanding of an individual's appraisal of her life. These may be primarily cognitive appraisals (eg life satisfaction) as well as affective, Consisting of pleasant or unpleasant emotions that individuals experience (eg happiness and depression). The notion of SWB incorporates positive factors and not just the absence of negative factors (Park, 2004). As stated by Diener (1984), the notion of SWB is characterized by three things, namely the one about the subjective sense. This is according to Cambell (1976) is something that is individual, not objective as wisdom, health, comfort normative. This may be in contact with SWB, but it is not a part thereof. Second, SWB is characterized by a positive measure, so that SWB is not just measured by the absence of negative feelings in a person alone. Third, the measurement of SWB should include a global measurement of the overall aspect of a person's life. Veenhoven (1993) argued that global Judgments, such as life satisfaction, are very important in assessing SWB because it best reflects the philosophical notion of the good life. In this case it may be measured in most aspects of life, but this should be an integrated measurement in all aspects of life. Similarly, in terms of measurement time can be limited few weeks months or years, but in principle should be that a person believed to be an overall feeling of the time aspect of life (Myers & Diener, 1995). Diener, et al. (2003) concluded that the SWB is an individual evaluation of a situation or a longer period of her life, and that includes the past. The evaluation covered the emotional reaction to a situation, the mood and the assessment of their life, fulfillment, and satisfaction with marital and employment. Furthermore, Philips (2006) states that SWB is more complex than just happiness.

This study as well as research from several experts (Diener, 1984; Diener & Lucas, 1999), which states that SWB has three components: (1) feeling happy, (2) not feeling happy, and (3 ) satisfaction. Diener and Lucas explained that pleasure and displeasure is a separate feeling, not like two sides of a coin because someone could occur at the level of an equally high for the two feelings or both are at a low level for the two feelings. Diener and Lucas (1999) states there are four classifications of feelings, namely (1) a high level sense of excitement coupled with the low feeling happy: so-called happy, (2) good feeling low level plus the high feeling happy: unhappy called, (3) Level feelings of pleasure and displeasure are all high: so-called emotional, (4) Level feelings of pleasure and displeasure are all low: not called emotional. Based on this, the individuals who have high SWB are individuals who are happy and satisfied with his life, while an unhappy and dissatisfied with his life is feeling low SWB. SWB is something that is important, because if the individual has this condition, quality of life can be achieved (Philips, 2006).

Destination Image

The image concept is a marketing-oriented concept and specifically DI is a concept widely used in the empirical context in the tourism marketing literature (Fakeye and Crompton, 1991). Bigné et al. (2001) define DI as the subjective interpretation of reality by the tourist. Barich and Kotler (1991) describe the image as the total of a person's or group's faiths, attitudes and impressions. These impressions can be true or false, real or fancy. Image is the reasonable connotation or acting that someone has on the thing which is beyond their physical perception limits. Therefore, the image tourists have of a destination is largely subjective because it is based on the perceptions each tourist has of all the destinations they have been to or have heard of (San Martín and Rodriguez, 2008).

Crompton (1979) defines the DI as 'the sum of beliefs, ideas and impressions that a person has of a destination'. This line is summed up by San Martin and del Bosque (2008) from a number of experts that based on their personal impressions and perceptions, tourists have the power to influence the tourism flow to any destination. San Martin and del Bosque (2008), in their explanation of how destination images are formed, noted that the consumers' perception of a destination is based on information from different sources over time, which is selected, elaborated and embellished in order to have a meaningful existence.

Based on Echtner and Ritche (1991) study as shown in Figure 1, images of destinations can range from those based on 'common', functional, and psychological traits to those based on more 'unique' features, events, feelings or auras. In other words, on one extreme of the continuum, the image of a destination can be composed of the impressions of a core group of traits on which all destinations are commonly rated and compared. For example, a destination's image can include ratings on certain common functional characteristics, such as price levels, transportation infra-structure, types of accommodation, climate, etc. The destination can also be rated on very commonly considered psychological characteristics: level of friendliness, safety, and quality of service expected, fame, etc. On the other end of the continuum, images of destinations can include unique features and events (functional characteristics) or auras (psychological characteristics).

Figure 1: The components of Destination Image (Echtner & Ritchie, 1991)    

DI consists of two main components-those that are attribute-based and those that are holistic and each of these DI components contains functional, or more tangible, and psychological, or more abstract, characteristics (Echtner & Ritchie, 2003). However for Gartner (1993), the DI is hierarchically formed by cognitive, affective, and conative/behavioral components. The cognitive or perceptual component refers to the beliefs or knowledge about a destination's attributes evaluations (Stepchenkova & Mills, 2010). The use of the cognitive component provides easily-interpreted information to destination managers' in order to develop positioning strategies (Chen, 2001). Whereas affective images refer to the feelings aroused by a place, people with different motives may assess a destination in similar ways (Ahmed et al., 2006). For Gartner (1993), the affective component is the value that individuals attach to destinations based on motivations. Apart from the two previous perspectives, several studies have also associated a behavioral component, which relates to the actions of individuals, the probability of visiting/revisiting the destination and recommending it (Pike & Ryan, 2004). In this study, the component behavior is behavior that is intended to choose the city of Yogyakarta as a place for continuing education purposes, and is likely to recommend it to others for the same purpose.

As a result of both cognitive and affective evaluations an overall image of a place is formed (Baloglu & McCleary, 1999). However, this image changes with time and from person to person (Gallarza et al., 2002). According to Jenkins (1999), one problem of DI is that researchers continue to overlook the holistic representations of destinations, by measuring only fragments. In fact, Echtner and Ritchie (2003) posit the existence of a continuum that plays a key role in shaping the image from the common functional attributes (directly observable/measurable) to the unique functional attributes (icons and special events that form part of the destination), and from common psychological attributes (abstract attributes) to unique psychological attributes (feelings associated with places). Furthermore, the overall image has been considered an independent dimension of image, greater than the sum of the cognitive and affective components (Baloglu & McCleary, 1999).

The importance of understanding tourist DIand SWB

DI is very important for the success and sustainability of the tourism life of a country or a city, because the perception of the DI relates to decision making and sales of tourist products and services (Jenkins, 1999). It is useful to monitor both levels and changes in the image that the market has of the destination, because monitoring can enable the destination manager to assess the effectiveness of a specific advertising campaign in a specific target market, or to determine the impact that the hosting of a particular mega event has had on market awareness of the host destination. Because of such an important role of tourism DI, national tourism organizations should track the images held by potential visitors in the international marketplace. Such tracking studies and market segmentation analysis are used in the design of their promotional campaigns (Batchelor, 1999).

A destination must strategically manage its image, because a destination's image shapes the way citizens, visitors and business people respond to it. It is necessary that today's tourism marketer look at a destination's image as a major influence on investors, new residents, and visitors. Once an investor chooses a location, that place then becomes a part of the investor's projected image to customers. For example, French perfumes, Russian caviar, Belgian chocolates, Chilean wines, and Colombian coffee are elements that contribute to each of the respective country's images (Gertner and Kotler, 2004).

DI of the visitors or new residents is very important, because the image of the tourists recognize it will be obvious about anything that may affect the individual's subjective perception. It is as it was concluded by del Bosque and San Martin (2008) in his research that the preconceived image of the tourist destination influences expectations and loyalty. Additionally, there is support for the impact of expectations and emotions on satisfaction, which has a significant influence on behavioral intentions. Thus it is easily predicted that DI will affect a person's SWB. As is well known, any image that could make a have positive and negative feelings, then it becomes easier marketing strategy to guide the development of tourism. Therefore, efforts to develop a tourist area can not be separated from efforts to enhance the good image of the city.

Metode

Dependent variable of this study is SWB, while the independent variable is the variable DI. The subjects were students at the University of Mercu Buana Yogyakarta, totaling 105 people, consisting of 62 male students and 43 female students, with the characteristics of the subjects are college students who have a minimum of one semester at the University of Mercu Buana Yogyakarta, coming from high school outside DIY (Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta or Regional Yogyakarta).

Research data collection methods using scale method, namely (1) the scale of SWB, which has three components, namely aspect, a sense of excitement; displeasure, and satisfaction, (2) DI scale, the scale is based on the preparation of Echtner and Ritche (1991) study as shown in Figure 1. The data obtained from the students who are expected to respond to 12 items SWB scale, and 12 items DI scale, using 6-point Likert scale, which ranks from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (6). The scale of this study is valid and reliable. The correlation coefficient between the item-total after correction for SWB scale ranged from 0.204 to 0.844, and for the DI scale ranged from 0.201 to 0.514. While reliabilias coefficient alpha, SWB scale is 0.844, and the SWB scale is 0.609. Data analysis techniques used in this study is Karl Pearson Product Moment Correlation. This analysis is used to examine the relationship between DI variables and SWB variables.

Results and Discussion

As shown in Table 1, the results of data analysis showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between DI and SWB, with a correlation coefficient of 0.460 (p <.01). This means that getting positive the DI to the city of Yogyakarta, it will be followed by the higher SWB the student, or vice versa DI getting negative toward the city of Yogyakarta, it will be followed by getting lower SWB. Based on this hypothesis means that the proposed research is acceptable.     

)* p < .05 ; )** p < .01

To identify the perceived image of Yogyakarta as a tourism destination by university students from outside Yogyakarta, the questionnaire contains of a list of 12 different elements of Yogyakarta Destination Image, such as city of food and drink tasty, many places of cultural and historical, the nature is beautiful, a safe place, cheap costs, good facilities for travelers there, neighborly, understated and relaxed and so on.

The analysis of the perceived image of Yogyakarta as a tourism destination by university students from outside Yogyakarta using the SPSS software is displayed with the value of each item MeanRank DI scale. Seen from Table 1, it can be concluded that there are 10 images depicting the city of Yogyakarta is above the value MeanRank 4, and if selected the two highest image is the image of Yogyakarta as a city that has istinctive cultural life (MeanRank, 4.70), and the food and tasty drink (MeanRank, 4.65). The results indicate that Yogyakarta university attracts students from outside Yogyakarta mainly because distinctive cultural life and as tasty food and drink, as well as cheap costs, many places of cultural and historical, good facilities for travelers there, neighborly, understated and relaxed, unique and different from other, peace and quiet. Therefore, destination marketers in Yogyakarta should emphasize these aspects in performing its role within the overall tourism marketing strategy to university students from outside Yogyakarta.

From Table 1, it can also be concluded that the second image depicts Yogyakarta, with a value of 4 is MeanRank easy and comfortable (3.27), and the nature is beautiful (3.89). This suggests that university students from outside Yogyakarta Yogyakarta less look that can be identified with the second image. Therefore, in Yogyakarta tourism marketers should carefully work to improve the negative image elements of Yogyakarta. It also shows that there are many marketing opportunities to strength the motivation of potential university students from outside Yogyakarta 'travelers.

Conclusion

From the previous discussion, the main conclusions of this paper can be summarized as follows: (1) There was a positive and significant relationship between DI and SWB. This means that getting positive the DI to the city of Yogyakarta, it will be followed by the higher SWB the student, or vice versa DI getting negative toward the city of Yogyakarta, it will be followed by getting lower SWB. (2) The perceived "Positive" images of Yogyakarta as a tourism destination by university students from outside Yogyakarta are: Yogyakarta is the city of distinctive cultural life, Yogyakarta is the city of Food and drink tasty, Yogyakarta is a Cheap costs city; (3) The perceived "negative" images of Yogyakarta as a tourism destination shows deficiencies of marketing strategy of Yogyakarta towards the university students from outside Yogyakarta tourism market, as it failed to introduce them to other aspects of the Yogyakarta tourist product such as The nature is beautiful, Easy and comfortable, and A safe place. This paper presents a significant contribution to the understanding of Yogyakarta's Image by university students from outside Yogyakarta that influence the choice of advanted study in higher Education in Yogyakarta city, the which will help the decision makers, planners, and marketers in Yogyakarta to build the marketing strategy for high school graduates and university graduate students from outside Yogyakarta continued to want to continue their studies in the city of Yogyakarta. (4) Identification of students' images, preferences, and expectations can assist in the more effective positioning and marketing of Yogyakarta destination. Given the growing size and importance of the youth and student travel market, further analysis of this market segment appears highly warranted.

As a conclusion, a clear understanding of potential travelers' image toward Yogyakarta as a tourism destination is crucial for developing successful marketing strategies in promoting and positioning Yogyakarta as a tourism destination. In particular, this study gives a hand to the decision makers to take the right decisions to help Yogyakarta to compete with success over other destinations to attract this segment of potential university students from outside Yogyakarta travelers; and also helps to suggest the correct actions and tools to maintain and renovate and reinvent a positive image about Yogyakarta, or to reconstruct a weak or negative one.

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