Factors influencing conative loyalty in anthropology museum tourism

Abstract

Although service quality and customer satisfaction have been frequently discussed by scholars in tourism research, their connections with emotional factors have rarely been investigated in a museum context. The Anthropology Museum of Guangxi focuses on unique ethnic minorities, which is used as the case study in this paper. This study examines the relationships among the factors that influence visitors’ emotional attachment, satisfaction, conative loyalty, and perceived quality. Structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to model the relations among these four constructs, a 184-visitor sample is assessed, and the conceptual model supports all the proposed hypotheses. The results show positive influences among emotional attachment, visitor satisfaction, and perceived quality, which may indeed affect visitors’ conative loyalty to a specific museum. The practical applications are suggested based on findings that the conative loyalty of museum visitors is relatively influenced by their emotional connection and that emotional arousal can promote the acceptance of museum tourism.