Tourists perceived crowding and destination attractiveness: The moderating effects of perceived risk and experience quality

Abstract

Tourism crowding may affect the quality of tourism and destination attractiveness. By employing structural equation modeling on a sample of 367 tourists collected through a field survey during National Day Golden Week, the most crowded tourism period in China, the effects of tourists' perceived crowding on destination attractiveness were identified, incorporating perceived risk and experience quality as moderating variables. Both physical crowding and human crowding had negative effects on destination attractiveness, indicating that quality concerns do not matter for tourism development. Perceived risk and experience quality moderate the effect of physical crowding on destination attractiveness. If tourists have a higher risk perception and a lower experience quality, the negative effect of physical crowding on destination attractiveness will be intensified, implying that perceived risk and experience quality – variables that have rarely been investigated before – indeed play important moderating roles.