Exploring the Relationship of Image Formation on Tourist Satisfaction and Loyalty: Evidence From China.

Abdelhamid Jebbouri,Heqing Zhang,Lei Wang,Nasser Bouchiba

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.748534

Abdelhamid Jebbouri, Heqing Zhang + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.748534

Copy DOI

Abstract

Cultural heritage tourist destinations have emerged as a hot topic in tourism literature, but there have been relatively few studies that determine the role of the involvement of local participation in either tourism planning or the decision-making processes of tourists. The connection between local community participation (LCP), authenticity, access to local products, destination visit image, tourist satisfaction, and tourist loyalty is thus relatively unexplored in the literature. This study used a quantitative approach based on a survey with 406 respondents visiting the city of Kaiping in Guangdong, China. The proposed hypotheses were empirically tested with SPSS and Analysis of Moment Structures. The resulting outcomes indicated a positive correlation between LCP, authenticity, and access to local and destination visit image, which led to tourist satisfaction and ultimately resulted in tourist loyalty. Additional theoretical contributions, practical implications, and limitations were also discussed.

Highlights

Tourism is when people travel from one place to another to stay or work and spend temporary leisure time at their destination (Towoliu et al, 2020)
Based on the discussion above, this study proposed three research questions: RQ1: How do local community participation (LCP), authenticity, and access to local products influence the formation of tourist destination visit image (DVI)?
This study used IBM SPSS (IBM, Armonk, New York, NY, United States) to perform descriptive analysis and ANOVA. This was followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and SEM using Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS)

Summary

Introduction

Tourism is when people travel from one place to another to stay or work and spend temporary leisure time at their destination (Towoliu et al, 2020). Tourism can be categorized by the motives of the tourists in the destinations. The motivation for attracting tourism may result from different cultural endorsements, natural reserves, and maritime features (Song et al, 2020). Cultural heritage tourism destinations are gaining popularity, and culture has been identified as a significant predictor of intention to visit (Lee et al, 2020). In 1986, the Chinese government designated tourism as a broad economic activity with the explicit goal of launching the modernization program of the country. Tourism was designated as part of the national plan of China for social and economic development for the first time (Sharpley and Telfer, 2015)

Methods

Results

Conclusion