Traveling from South to North: the relationships between historical nostalgia, novelty seeking, and attitudes to visit North Korea

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate the roles of historical nostalgia and novelty seeking influencing attitude to visit North Korea in the range of South Korean tourists. Based on previous studies, 8 hypotheses were derived and two theoretical research models were proposed. The originally proposed model and its rival were tested using the data collected from 200 South Koreans. The results showed that 1) historical nostalgia positively affects novelty seeking, 2) novelty seeking has a full mediating effect between historical nostalgia and cognitive / affective attitudes. 3) affective attitude positively affects cognitive attitude, and 4) cognitive and affective attitudes significantly affect behavioral attitude. This research is expected to newly introduce the concept of historical nostalgia and its impact on tourists’ behaviors in tourism study and contribute to the tourism development and marketing of North Korea in the future.