With continuous changes in tourists’ needs, destination marketers keep attempting to facilitate creative and satisfactory strategies in destinations which support their goals (e.g., create long-term successful pop-culture tourism). This suggests that a better understanding of the holistic perspective and the factors relevant for determining the complex relationship with regard to pop-culture tourism is needed. However, studies on the effects on psychological concepts from fans’ perspective in pop culture phenomena are limited (Lee et al., 2008). Their importance has not been comprehensively investigated in the context of travel and tourism. In this study, the authors further extend self-expansion theory in the pop-culture tourism setting.

By adopting self-expansion theory, this study argues that fans who are attached to the pop-star and involved in his and her activities are not just recipients of the pop-star’s creative resources (e.g., music, films, and TV); they also actively invest their own resources in the pop-star so as to maintain their close relationship with the pop-star. As for pop-culture tourism, tourists driven by pop-culture mostly consist of zealous fans who seek some sort of experience associated with a particular pop-culture or media themes. Particularly, pop-star fans are a unique group of individuals as many are highly involved with and have an emotional attachment to their pop-star (Fiske, 1992).

Accordingly, the authors in this study successfully applied self-expansion theory as a theoretical foundation to bridge the relationship between fans and destinations - pop-stars’ homelands. Thus, findings of this study provide a more in-depth understanding of international fans and tourists’ emotional and behavioral responses.