The support of attendees for tourism development: evidence from religious festivals, Taiwan

Abstract

This study examines the relationships among emotional experience, authenticity experience, festival identity, and support for tourism development among attendees at two well-known traditional religious festivals in Taiwan. Our theoretical models suggest that authenticity experience directly affects attendees' festival identity and indirectly affects attendees' support for the tourism development of the Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage festival and the Neimen Songjiang Battle Array festival. Moreover, attendees' emotional experience positively, significantly, and directly affects their festival identity and indirectly affects their support for the tourism development of the Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage festival. The theoretical framework of this study provides insightful suggestions about festival implications that are valuable to researchers and practitioners in the field of festival tourism and extends our understanding of traditional religious festivals attendees' support for tourism development. This study sheds light on previously proposed but unexamined behavioural models as applied to the attendees of traditional religious festivals and thus contributes significantly to the literature on festival tourism and attendees' behaviour at festivals. We conclude that when people participate in traditional religious festivals such as the ones under consideration, they gain authentic experiences, which strengthens their sense of traditional religious festival identity and place attachment; as a result, they are more likely to support tourism development.

How Authentic Experience Affects Traditional Religious Tourism Development: Evidence from the Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage, Taiwan

“…However, festivals also produce several negative impacts, such as increased prices for services/goods, parking problems, and traffic congestion (Jeong and Faulkner 1996), as well as sociocultural problems (Zamani-Farahani and Musa 2012). Understanding the perceived benefits and costs to attendees and residents during a festival can provide valuable information that allows festival organizers to make better decisions, create more positive emotions and a stronger festival identity among attendees, and ensure festivals are sustainable (Gursoy, Kim, and Uysal 2004; Lee, Fu, and Chang 2015).…”

“…Although the importance of local residents’ support for tourism development has been widely identified in tourism scholarship (e.g., Lee 2013; Nunkoo and So 2016; Woo, Kim, and Uysal 2015), assessment of attendees’ support for tourism development has been relatively neglected (Lee, Fu, and Chang 2015). A traditional religious festival is a type of cultural celebration (Getz 2008; Henderson 2011).…”

The Low-Carbon Tourism Experience: A Multidimensional Scale Development

“…Similar to consumer experience, tourism experience is crucial and has been intensively assessed in the literature, such as island-based recreation experience (Lee, Jan, et al, 2018), rural tourism experience (Kastenholz, Carneiro, Marques, & Loureiro, 2018), cuisine experience (Lee, Chao, & Lin, 2018), and camping tourism experience (Mikulić, Prebežac, Šerić, & Krešić, 2017). Tourism experience influences tourists’ satisfaction in a positive manner (Kastenholz et al, 2018), provides destination managers’ management and marketing strategies (Mikulić et al, 2017), represents tourists’ culture awareness (Lee, Chao, et al, 2018) and ERBs (Lee & Jan, 2015a, 2015b; Lee, Jan, et al, 2015; Lee, Jan, et al, 2018). Hence, tourism experience can be regarded as a consumer experience, and thus, sensory, affective, learning, and escapist experiences can be included in the constructs of the LCTE.…”

“…Nature-based tourists choose to experience nature-based destinations because they seek a learning experience, sensory experience, and affective experience about other parts of the environments and ecosystems (Mehmetoglu, 2007). As the nature-based tourists devote their attention to specific activities that may increase their environmental and sociocultural knowledge and behavior (Ballantyne et al, 2011b; Lee, Jan, et al, 2015), they feel prestige experience (O’Reilly, 2006). It is interesting, assessing and integrating these dimensions relate to LCTE of nature-based tourists.…”

“…Scholars have indicated that emotional responses include the dimensions of arousal, pleasure, and dominance (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974). A destination’s environment stimulates a psychological response among tourists that involves emotional experiences and behaviors (Lee, Fu, & Chang, 2015). Tourists convert sensory experiences into empathy for a locality and feel an emotional connection with a place, which may cause them to reflect and change their behavior (Ballantyne et al, 2011a).…”