Understanding Leisure Trip Experience and Subjective Well-Being: an Illustration of Creative Travel Experience

Abstract

Leisure activities provide an opportunity to stimulate an individual’s creative potential, making positive contributions to health and well-being. Using a positive psychology perspective as a guide for understanding the relationships between tourists and their interactions with creative tourist attractions, this study attempts to detect the positive effects of creative leisure travel experience on positive emotions, behavioral intentions and subjective well-being. Based on Self Determination Theory, this study investigates whether psychological needs satisfaction can be derived from a tourism environment that provides opportunities to experience positive emotions as well as enhances subjective well-being. The present study points to the importance of positive effects from creative leisure travel experience on subjective well-being by extending the research framework of SDT to incorporate the positive emotions perspective for understanding tourist experience. This study also confirms that psychological needs satisfaction acts as an important antecedent of behavioral intention to revisit creative tourist attractions.