Determinants of Visitors’ Loyalty to Religious Sacred Event Places: A Multigroup Measurement Invariance Model

Abstract

Places hosting religious sacred events provide opportunities for visitors to find spiritual growth and also afford glimpses into the local culture, community, and hosting religious group. This study looks at tourists’ intended behavioral loyalty to a religious sacred event place as determined through motivations, shared beliefs, and emotional solidarity with other visitors, and memorable religious experiences. Data were collected from 985 visitors (556 domestic and 429 international) during the 2019 Kumbh Mela, held in Prayagraj, India. Contrary to previous studies, results indicated that emotional solidarity did not significantly influence attendees’ intended behavioral loyalty (among domestic visitors). Furthermore, in employing an invariance structural test for paths mentioned in the model, results revealed that the effects of shared beliefs, motivations, emotional solidarity, and memorable religious experiences differed among domestic and international visitors. Study implications and limitations are provided at the close of the paper, giving way to future research opportunities.

Influence of memorable tourism experience on attitude towards pilgrimage: a moderated-mediation model with memorable religious experience and religiosity

“…Religious tourism has developed as a popular type of tourism that has a unique reason for alternative travelers (Stavrianea and Kamenidou, 2022). Observing the lack of studies involving the impact of social factors, such as religion, that affect MTEs, a new concept of memorable religious experience (MRE) was introduced to study experiences in a religious setting (Kamath et al, 2023;Kim, 2018). Even non-religious tourists may have spiritual feelings and comparable religious experiences due to the spiritual atmosphere (Bideci and Bideci, 2022).…”

“…The research studies conducted on visitor experience have grown significantly in the last 2 decades and it is one of the most explored topics in the tourism sector (Kamath et al, 2023). Some earlier scholarly studies claimed that MTE or positive experiences at any destination impact its visitor's behavioral intentions (Mittal et al, 2021;Ribeiro et al, 2018) however, in contrast, few studies disapproved of this stating that positive experiences may not necessarily impact behavioral intention (Sun et al, 2013;Yoon and Uysal, 2005).…”

“…MTE was assessed using the four-item scale adopted from previously validated studies (Tiwari et al, 2023;Vada et al, 2019). MRE was measured using a five-item scale (Kamath et al, 2023) and REL was measured on 4 items (Barnard et al, 2017;Rehman et al, 2022). Also, ATT has been measured on 4 items (Hasan et al, 2019;Hsu and Huang, 2012) and BI (RCI) using 4 items (Mittal et al, 2021;Rasoolimanesh et al, 2022).…”

Methodological and theoretical advancements in social impacts of tourism research

“…According to the conceptual work by Joo et al (2022), what may contribute even further to our knowledge of emotional solidarity are interaction rituals (through the interaction ritual theory). Religious tourism contexts would seem to be the most ideal environment in which to test such relationships Klamath et al, 2021).…”

Determinants of visitors' festival satisfaction and subjective well-being: tracing the roles of place attachment and satisfaction

“…In India, it is a known fact that large-scale Hindu festivals (e.g. Kumbha Mela, Thrissur Pooram) attract millions of visitors (Shinde, 2010; Kamath et al , 2021). They are the repositories of religious tradition and culture and assume their fullest expressions in religious centers (Shinde, 2010).…”