Image of China tourism and sustainability issues in Western media: an investigation of National Geographic

Purpose – The current study aims at exploring China’s tourism sustainability issues as indicated in magazine articles related to China tourism. China’s environmental, socio-cultural and economic sustainability has been frequently discussed in Western media. Design/methodology/approach – Both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies were used to content analyze the textual data in one of the most popular US travel magazine – National Geographic in the past ten years (2003-2012). Findings – This study presents the changes of topics on China tourism image conveyed by Western media in the past ten years (2013-2012). In addition, themes on China tourism sustainability issues are extracted from the China tourism image messages. The results reveal China tourism sustainability issues in two levels: sustainability issues directly related to China tourism with two dimensions of environmental sustainability and socio-cultural sustainability, and sustainability issues indirectly related to China tourism wi...