The master's thesis "Study on the positive health effects and influence path and characteristics of health tourism destinations" completed by postgraduate student Jia Yanan under the supervision of Professor Shi Peihua from our college was awarded the 2022 school-level Excellent Master's Thesis.
Against the backdrop of increased importance placed on the health functions of tourism products, the proliferation of health tourism products, and the construction of Healthy China, this study introduces the concept of health effects and the theory of triadic interaction and points out that existing research on the health effects of wellness destinations mostly focuses on studying and analyzing the positive health effects generated from a specific type of wellness destination, while ignoring the diversity of wellness destination types, which makes it difficult to directly apply research conclusions to other types of wellness destinations. Therefore, it is necessary to construct a positive health effect influence path model with universality to demonstrate the causal relationships among the various elements.
Based on qualitative research, this study selects five types of wellness destinations as research objects, collects and screens 223 high-quality travelogues, totaling more than 600,000 words, and constructs a positive health effect model with good universality through a step-by-step coding method, extracting the role path between health resources and positive health effects in different types of wellness destinations. This study introduced the concept of health effects and the theory of triadic interaction, against the backdrop of increased emphasis on the health function of tourism products by tourists, the growing number of health tourism products, and the construction of a healthy China. The study pointed out that most existing research on the health effects of health tourism destinations starts from a specific type of health tourism destination and analyzes the positive health effects it generates, ignoring the diversity of health tourism destination types, which means that research conclusions cannot be directly applied to other types of health tourism destinations. Therefore, a positive health effects influence path model with universality needs to be constructed to demonstrate the causal relationship between the various elements. Based on qualitative research, this study selected five categories of health tourism destinations as research objects, collected and screened 223 high-quality travelogues totaling over 600,000 words, and constructed a positive health effects model with good universality through hierarchical coding. The study also extracted the role of health resources and positive health effects in different types of health tourism destinations and compared and explained the reasons for their differences, providing suggestions for improvement.
The study found that 1) landscape resources and characteristic health resources are the core health resources of tourism destinations and the main sources of positive health effects of health tourism destinations; 2) core health resources and supporting facilities interact with tourists to produce positive health effects through interactive and non-interactive pathways; 3) positive health effects produced by interactive resources are more significant; 4) the positive health effects that tourists obtain in health tourism destinations are ranked from strong to weak in terms of psychological health, physical health, and social adaptation; 5) tourists' health literacy plays an important guiding role, i.e., guiding the potential positive health value of health tourism destination resources to the transformation of positive health effects. The study results can provide a reference for the construction, development, and management of health tourism destinations, fully tap the health value of destinations, and also provide destination-matching recommendations for tourists with health needs.
（Translator：BI Jianwu，Proofreading：LI Chunxiao）
