Hierarchical value map of religious tourists visiting the Vatican City/Rome

Abstract

ABSTRACTConstructing a hierarchical value map, a psychological structure is explored to understand how religious tourists perceive the sites they visit in terms of site attributes, the benefits religious tourists seek, and their own personal values. The sample comprised foreign tourists who visited Catholic religious sites with religious tourism as their primary purpose. Using means-end chain theory, a hierarchical value map of selected religious tourists was created. A typology comprising three prominent sets of values was discovered: religious and pious values, spiritual values, and values associated with tourism and responsibility. The most salient attribute–consequence–value (A–C–V) linkage was as follows: ‘the opportunity to explore the traditions and history of religious sites’ (A)—‘had a genuinely religious experience’ (C)—‘learned about the history of my religion’ (C)—‘enhancement of faith and spirituality’ (V).