Does Value Lead to Loyalty? Exploring the Important Role of the Tourist–Destination Relationship

Behavioral Sciences

Wenjun He¹  Haihong Wang²  Yufan Yang³ 

[1] Department of Marketing and Tourism Management, School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China;Department of Tourism Management, School of Business, Liaoning University, Shenyang 110036, China;School of Business Administration, Faculty of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 611130, China;

关键词: perceived value;    satisfaction;    destination trust;    place attachment;    loyalty;   

DOI  :  10.3390/bs12050136

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The perceived value of a tourist’s trip, representing a trade-off between costs and benefits of travelling to a destination, can exert a significant influence on tourists’ loyalty, which is a main concern for managers of tourist destinations. However, the mechanism between the destination value and tourist loyalty remains unexplored, especially in the new context of relationship marketing. To advance the understanding of the mechanism, we introduced 3 variables of “tourist–destination relationship”, namely place attachment (PA), destination trust (DT) and tourist satisfaction (TS), combined with perceived value (PV) and tourist loyalty (TL), and therefore constructed the conceptual model. Taking the Hangzhou City of China as an example, the conceptual model was fitted and tested using the structural equation model (SEM). The results show that: (1) PV can directly and positively affect TS and DT respectively, while there was no significant effect of PV on PA; (2) TS and DT can directly and positively influence TL, but the effect of PA on TL has not been supported empirically; (3) PV has a significant positive effect on TL; and (4) there are internal relationship among the 3 variables measuring the tourist–destination relationship, in other words, TS can significantly affects PA, DT respectively, and DT has a significant positive effect on PA. The findings of this study provide empirical references for understanding the important role of the tourist–destination relationship.

【 授权许可】

Unknown