Applying Hofstede’s National Culture Measures in Tourism Research: Illuminating Issues of Divergence and Convergence

Given the emerging evidence that national culture influences visitor behavior and that Hofstede’s concept (1980, 2001) has become the most accepted means to quantify dominant national cultural values, the focus of this study was to test the underlying assumptions of how these measures are applied in research. Drawing from a sample of tourists from eight countries who completed Hofstede’s original instruments, the results reveal little differences between Hofstede’s 2001 national cultural measures with the current study’s data. This finding provides strong support for Hofstede’s dimensions as a measure of central tendencies of visitors from different nations. Second, graphically contrasting respondents’ values along the five cultural dimensions reveals that the between-nation differences are relatively small when compared to the within-nation variability, indicating that subcultures do exist. This analysis also identifies international regions that cluster closely together, demonstrating that national cultural differences do not end at national borders.