Heritage Attachment and Tourist Behavior in Cultural Heritage Destinations during a Pandemic toward Development of a Strategic Policy Model

Abstract

The impact of COVID-19 on a tourism destination contributed to the new landscape in tourism research primarily related to the changing tourist behavior over time due to any crisis. This study examines the relationship between heritage attachment and tourist behavior in visiting Cultural Heritage Destinations (CHD) in the province of Iloilo and how these constructs vary across the current condition, including the impact of COVID-19 on tourist travel. The data collected addressed the changing tourist behavior in visiting cultural heritage destinations in the province of Iloilo, Philippines, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conversely, there is still a lack of research about the expanded TPB on tourists’ attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and revisit intention relative to the heritage attachment in cultural heritage destinations in the Philippines. Respondents of the study were 292 tourists who visited the cultural heritage destinations in Iloilo distributed among at least 30 tourists in the province’s top ten cultural heritage sites, places, and attractions. The noted limitation was the classification of tourists, which only targeted local or domestic tourists who were the primary respondents due to pandemics. The findings depicted significant associations between the current condition, heritage attachment, and tourist behavior. However, heritage attachment (motivation and preferences) has a high value of dependence, thus proving that heritage attachment gives value to a tourist to revisit a destination with resilient conditional factors as the results of the study. Furthermore, the study provided new constructs in heritage attachment (motivations and preference) and extended the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to contribute substantially to this research. The result of the study apropos on these constructs was favorably high in all indicators and significantly explains the strong relationship between heritage attachment and the level of tourist behavior by employing both regression and PLS-SEM, thus supporting this research’s theoretical foundation. The practical implication of this research was provided by formulating a structural model which defines the objective of developing a strategic policy model for preserving the historical identity and sustainability of CHDs in the host province.