The Impact of the Wellness Tourism Experience on Tourist Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Tourist Satisfaction

Abstract

On the basis of the bottom-up spillover theory, this study explores the influence of the wellness tourism experience on tourists’ well-being. Considering wellness tourists as the research participants, tourist satisfaction, gender, and age were selected as the mediating and moderating variables, respectively, to study the mechanism between the wellness tourism experience and tourist well-being. A questionnaire survey was sent to 445 participants who engaged in wellness tourism in China, and an empirical analysis was conducted using the structural equation model. The results showed that the entertainment, esthetic, and escape experience of wellness tourism can significantly affect tourists’ hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Tourist satisfaction, as a mediating variable, can enhance the positive impact of the wellness tourism experience on tourist well-being. Moreover, gender and age have a significant moderating effect on the relationship among wellness tourism experience, tourist satisfaction, and tourist well-being. This study enriches the current scholarship in the fields of the wellness tourism experience and tourist well-being and provides a theoretical basis and scientific decision-making reference for wellness tourism enterprises and tourism management departments.