Evaluating the quality of police services to foreign tourists in urban space using the importance-performance technique (Case study: Isfahan city)

Esmaelian, Zahra Sadat

doi:10.22034/jspr.2023.2011922.1048

Evaluating the quality of police services to foreign tourists in urban space using the importance-performance technique (Case study: Isfahan city)

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Zahra Sadat Esmaelian

ACECR Institute of Higher Education (Isfahan Branch) Isfahan, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22034/jspr.2023.2011922.1048

Abstract

Despite the rapid development of the tourism industry in the world, there is great potential to attract tourists to Iran and Isfahan. Data and statistics indicate the failure of the industry and its unsuccessful performance in the country and the city of Isfahan. It seems one of the main reasons for this event is the lack of attention to the expectations and preferences of tourists entering the country, another reason refers to the lack of effort to increase their satisfaction. The main aim of this study is to understand tourists' satisfaction better and identify and prioritize the factors affecting their satisfaction and security support of tourists who travel to Isfahan. Besides evaluating the tourists' expectations, and features of traveling to Isfahan, and measuring the performance of desired features from tourists' view, this study aims to develop executive strategies to improve satisfaction from the police services. According to Para Suraman's theory "dimensions of service quality" assessed the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. The method of this research is descriptive-analytic and it was evaluated in a standard questionnaire consisting of 40 questions in a sample of 130 people. Data were analyzed by Friedman, Pearson, and Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) tests. The result of the correlation between service quality dimensions and the level of satisfaction of foreign tourists shows that there is a significant relationship between these two. Accordingly, the expectations of tourists are higher than the current situation in all aspects. The highest mean score is in the expected physical and appearance dimensions (2.4), and the lowest mean score is related to responsibility (34.2). In the current situation, the highest score was assigned to empathy (82.3), and the lowest score was dedicated to the guarantee and warranty (05.2). Considering the difference between the mean scores of expectations and the perceived quality in all dimensions shows a negative gap. The highest score of the negative gap was for guarantee and warranty (-29.2), and the lowest score of the negative gap was for reliability (147.1) which indicates police services did not meet tourists' expectations from their perspectives. To obtain better results Importance-Performance theory was used. The results show four characteristics "the harmony between legislation and the police performance, the relative dominance of the police of tourists' languages in terminals, the amount of police proficiency in tourists' speeches in the city and Foreign National offices, and the amount of amiability of police and their respect to tourists in the city, and respect to tourists' beliefs and privacy and having a little information about tourists and etiquette of dealing with them. Despite the great importance of these characteristics, they have lower performance than the average and must be improved.

Keywords

Foreign urban Tourists

Dimensions of Service Quality

Police Services

Isfahan City

-Bozorgi, M. M. (2007). “Measuring Service Quality in the Airline Using Servequal Model ", Master Thesis, Lulea University of Technology.

-Donnelly M, Wisniewski M, Dalrymple JF, et al. (1995). measuring service quality in local government: the SERVQUAL approach. Int J Publ Sector Manage; 8(7): 15-20.

-Gibson, H. (2006). Sport Tourism; Concepts and Theories. UK: Sport in Global Society.

-Goodall, B, & Ashworth, G. (2013). Marketing in the Tourism Industry; Promotion of Destination Regions. London and New York: Routledge.

-Oliver, R. L. (1980). “A Cognitive Model of Antecedents and Consequences of Satisfaction Decisions ", Journal of Marketing Research, Vol XVII, November.

-Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. and Berry, L. L. (1988). "SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring Consumer perceptions of service quality”. Journal of Retailing, 63(1), pp.12–37.

-Zeithaml, V., Berry, L. & Parasuraman, A. (1996). The behavioral consequences of service quality. Marketing, (60), 31-46.

-Lee, S., Chua, B.L., Han, H., 2017. Role of service encounter and physical environment performances, novelty, satisfaction, and affective commitment in generating cruise passenger loyalty. Asia Pacific J. Tour. Res. 22 (2), 131–146.

Ahn, J., Back, K.J., Choe, Y., 2019. Customers’ needs satisfaction: a scale validation with refinement in the integrated resort setting. Int. J. Hosp. Manage. 82, 39–47.

Audita, H., Marck, M., 2017. Cross cultural consumer’s perceptions of country-of-Origin and luxury brands. Jurnal. Akuntansi. Manajemen. Ekonomi. 19 (1), 11–18.

Sun, S., Lee, P., Law, R., 2018. Impact of cultural values on technology acceptance and technology readiness. Int. J. Hosp. Manage.

Tse, W. T. S., & Tung, V. W. S. (2020). Assessing explicit and implicit stereotypes in tourism: Self-reports and implicit association test. Journal of sustainable tourism. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1860995

Zhang, S., Chen, N., & Hsu, C. H. (2021). Facial expressions versus words: Unlocking complex emotional responses of residents toward tourists. Tourism Management, 83,104226.

Stylidis, D., Woosnam, K. M., & Ivkov, M. (2020). Tourists’ emotional solidarity withresidents: A segmentation analysis and its links to destination image and loyalty. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 17, 100458.

Styv´en, M. E., Mariani, M. M., & Strandberg, C. (2020). This is my hometown! the role of place attachment, congruity, and self-expressiveness on residents’ intention to share a place brand message online. Journal of Advertising, 1–17.

Suess, C., Woosnam, K. M., & Erul, E. (2020). Stranger-danger? Understanding the moderating effects of children in the household on non-hosting residents’ emotional solidarity with airbnb visitors, feeling safe, and support for airbnb. Tourism Management, 77, 103952.

Pedersen, P. E., & Nysveen, H. (2001). Shopbot banking: An exploratory study of customer loyalty effects. International Journal of Bank Marketing, 19(4), 146–155.

Tse, S., & Tung, V. W. S. (2021a). Residents’ discrimination against tourists. Annals of Tourism Research, 88, 1–4.

Zhao, X., Lu, X., Liu, Y., Lin, J., & An, J. (2018). Tourist movement patterns understanding from the perspective of travel party size using mobile tracking data: A case study of xi’an, China. Tourism Management, 69, 368–383.

Park, S., Xu, Y., Jiang, L., Chen, Z., & Huang, S. (2020). Spatial structures of tourism destinations: A trajectory data mining approach leveraging mobile big data. Annals of Tourism Research, 84, 102973

Shao, H., Zhang, Y., & Li, W. (2017). Extraction and analysis of city’s tourism districts based on social media data. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 65, 66–78

Shoval, N., Schvimer, Y., & Tamir, M. (2018). Real-time measurement of tourists’ objective and subjective emotions in time and space. Journal of Travel Research, 57,3–16.