Abstract
Although some studies claim that tourism commercialization can promote the authentic experience and behaviour of tourists, there is a lack of empirical support. The main purpose of this study is to identify whether tourism commercialization can positively impact tourists’ perceived authenticity and tourist satisfaction in the context of cultural heritage tourism. We divide tourism authenticity into objective authenticity, constructive authenticity, existential authenticity and postmodern authenticity and propose a relationship model of tourism commercialization, the four authenticities, tourist satisfaction and loyalty. A survey was conducted in Langzhong Ancient City, a representative millennium-old county in China. A total of 618 valid domestic tourist questionnaires were collected. The partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) suitable for theory development was used for the conceptual model validation. The results indicate that tourism commercialization positively affects objective, constructive, existential and postmodern authenticity and tourist satisfaction; the four authenticities positively affect tourist satisfaction, while only objective and existential authenticity and tourist satisfaction positively affect tourist loyalty. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Highlights
The concept of authenticity is closely related to heritage tourism, especially cultural heritage tourism [1,2,3]
Many studies have established authenticity-related models to explore the effect of object-related, existential and even postmodern authenticity perception on heritage tourist satisfaction or/and loyalty (e.g., [1,2,4,7,9,15,17,18,19,20])
The main purpose of this study is to examine whether tourism commercialization can have a positive impact on tourists’ perceived authenticity and satisfaction in the cultural heritage context and to explain a common phenomenon
Summary
The concept of authenticity is closely related to heritage tourism, especially cultural heritage tourism [1,2,3]. Many studies have established authenticity-related models to explore the effect of object-related (including objective and constructive), existential and even postmodern authenticity perception on heritage tourist satisfaction or/and loyalty (e.g., [1,2,4,7,9,15,17,18,19,20]). These models only consider authenticity and cannot effectively explain a universal phenomenon: successful heritage sites are usually those with higher commercialization but more tourists, while those with more primitive features and less commercialization have fewer visitors. The phenomenon is very obvious in ancient cities, old towns, ancient villages and historical districts in China, such as Lijiang Ancient City, Zhouzhaung Ancient
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