Behavioral Characteristics of Anime Pilgrims Based on Travel Distance:

Abstract

Anime pilgrimage has recently gained attention as a new form of content tourism that influences the tourism industry and contributes to regional development. Approximately 12% of Japanese travelers engage in anime pilgrimages, and surveys have found high revisit intention and behavioral motivations among these travelers. However, where these anime pilgrims who travel to anime sacred site destinations originate and what they seek remain unclear. In this study, we analyze the pilgrimage notebook entries of three anime works with different target audiences and—as the distance traveled is an important factor determining the behavior of travelers—we also focus on the travel distance from the pilgrims’ place of origin to their sacred site destinations. The results reveal that the content of the entries differs between short- and long-distance travelers. Short-distance travelers are more likely to write about characters and events, whereas long-distance travelers more likely to write about the attractiveness of the region in which a sacred site is located.

Keywords

• contents tourism
• travel motivation
• traveler segmentation
• anime pilgrimage experience