A cross-cultural comparison of spatial information in tourist guidebooks: mainly focused on visual information

The aim of this study is to examine cultural differences in the style of describing locations of four cities between Japanese and English-language guidebooks. Two indexes representing the qualitative and quantitative properties of visual information in the guidebooks were statistically examined. The results demonstrated that the amount and style of visual information do not vary significantly in terms of either map coloration nor the numbers of photographs used in describing the four cities. In contrast, usage of visual information was unilaterally influenced by written language. However, as for the rate of map usage, the results showed some differences. The percentages of the usage for English-language guidebooks were stable in all of four cities, indicating that the page layout or description style of English-language guidebooks was not affected by the environments. However, the percentages of Japanese guidebooks are enhanced dramatically while they describe Japanese cities; they also include many small-scale maps describing a few landmarks. In consequence, as for visual information, the usage is generally affected by the language, although we can also conclude that Japanese guidebooks are more flexible to change the layout in accordance with the environment.