Cultural worldview and cultural experience in natural tourism sites

Abstract

Cultural worldview (CW) refers to people's underlying general attitudes such as basic beliefs and perceptions of a culture. The cultural experience (CE) in tourism is multi-dimensional, but little research has paid attention to the relationship between CW and CE in cultural tourism, especially with regard to nature sites. This paper explores the scales of CW and CE in the Chinese context in order to examine their relationship and compare the difference between high and low self-cultivation groups. Taking Huangshan Mountain as the study area, 253 usable questionnaire forms from 2016 to 322 usable questionnaire forms from 2017 were collected. Through exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), structural equation modeling (SEM) and multi-group analysis, the following results were obtained: 1) the scales of CW and CE in the Chinese context were identified; 2) the cultural linkages, cultural protection and Chinese traditional culture of nature in CW positively affected most dimensions of CE (conservation education, scientific knowledge, person-valuing and high culture); and 3) for the high self-cultivation group, the relationships between CW and CE were stronger and most of the latent mean scores were greater than those of the low self-cultivation group. This study contributes to the research in both cultural and nature tourism and social psychology, and has practical implications for destinations.