Drama tourism: the influence of Korean K-pop dramas characteristics on Malaysian travel motivation and behavioural intention

With international tourism becoming a profitable market, the economic benefit of filmand dramainduced tourism should not be overlooked (Dean & Suhartanto, 2019; Kim et al., 2019). Recently, the tourism demand in South Korea has proliferated, reaching a high of 1 2.7 million in 2019 (Statsita, 2021). This is in line with the sudden burst of Korean K-pop TV drama availability in the Malaysian market through the online streaming platform (Seo & Kim, 2020). Visiting the TV drama locations reflects how tourists are “pushed” by motivation as the internal variable to make a travel choice and how the motivation variable “pull” the tourists to the destinations portrayed in the TV dramas (Araújo Vila et al., 2021). In addition, experts have discovered that a selection of celebrities has tourist-inducing effects due to their success in attracting tourists to visit the locations featured in the films (Chen, 2018; Yen & Croy, 2016). Besides the substantial effect of film-induced tourism potential, the impact of Korean K-pop dramas on neighbouring Asian tourism markets is noteworthy to be explored (Dean & Suhartanto, 2019; Ing & Osman, 2018; Jeong et al., 2017; Khalid & Wok, 2020). This current research aims to empirically investigate the dimensions of Korean K-pop drama characteristics and on-site tourists’ travel motivation and behavioural intention.