Exploring rural tourism experiences through subjective perceptions: A visual Q approach

Abstract

Aim of study: To explore rural tourists’ views in order to identify different market segmentation in relation to rural tourism experiences.Area of study: Spain.Material and methods: Visual Q, a personal subjectivity research methodology, was applied to present both visual and linguistic aspects so that tourists can more intuitively recognize and answer questions regarding their experiences. Thus, it enables researchers to explore rural tourism experiences from tourists’ subjective perceptions.Main results: There are three primary segments of tourist experiences in rural tourism: ‘Occasion driven visitor’, ‘Active leisure seeker’ and ‘Rural immersion pursuer’ and across all visitors, a common pursuit of ‘A pleasant break’.Research highlights: This paper suggests that rural tourism should offer a range of value propositions, thereby escaping the existing monotonous ones.

Rural tourism experience research: a bibliometric visualization review (1996-2021)

“…Researchers typically use the questionnaire survey method, e.g. explore the development model of RTE from tourists’ subjective perceptions (Wookhyun and Alarcón, 2020).…”

“…Researchers typically use the questionnaire survey method, e.g. explore the development model of RTE from tourists' subjective perceptions (Wookhyun and Alarc on, 2020). In conclusion, RTE tends to examine eco-tourism, but pays little attention to the differences between geographical locations and types of RTE.…”

“…Following the increasing number of visitors to rural tourism, the interest of tourists in rural tourism experience (RTE) is growing (Sharpley and Jepson, 2011). Moreover, they have different purposes and reasons for pursuing RTE (An and Alarc on, 2020). Accordingly, RTE has become a popular research topic (Helgad ottir and Dashper, 2021).…”

Inferring customer heterogeneity for rural tourism: A latent class approach based on a best-worst choice modelling

“…Next, by filtering literature research, a pool of important rural tourism experiences was derived. Finally, interviews with ten experts, consisting of rural tourism owners, rural tourism association representatives, and professors in related fields, were conducted to identify the seven attributes influencing customers when choosing rural tourism (An and Alarcón 2020). The seven attributes are shown in Figure 1.…”

Harmonious Degree of Sound Sources Influencing Visiting Experience in Kulangsu Scenic Area, China

“…That is, the multidimensional sensory perception of the landscape is a central part of the overall visiting experience [9]. However, many of the previous researchs on the visiting experience have focused on the visual dimension, neglecting the role of the other senses [10][11][12][13], which limits our understanding of complex environments, as visualization only describes a fragment of a given landscape [14]. There is a growing interest in sensory perception other than vision, with new sensory perception research focusing on auditory perception, as it is the second most important way of perceiving the environment after the visual [15].…”