Effects of creative atmosphere on tourists' post‐experience behaviors in creative tourism: The mediation roles of tourist inspiration and place attachment

Abstract

Considering the popularity of creative tourism, increasing research has focused on the creative atmosphere in creative tourism destinations. Based on Stimulus-Organism-Response framework, this research examined how creative atmosphere influences tourists' post-experience behaviors-experience intensification and experience extension-through the mediating roles of tourist inspiration and place attachment.Using survey data from 345 tourists at three representative creative tourism destinations in Xiamen, this study finds that creative atmosphere positively predicts experience intensification and experience extension. Besides, tourist inspiration and place attachment were demonstrated to play significant serial mediating roles in both creative atmosphere-experience intensification and creative atmosphereexperience extension relationships.

Dark tourism through the lens of attachment theory and domestic tourists

“…Scales adopted from Williams and Vaske (2003) and Ramkissoon and Mavondo (2014) were used. Notably, studies have shown that this scale can predict post‐visit behaviors such as intensification and extension of tourists' experiences (Wei et al, 2023), thereby supporting the scale's predictive validity.…”

Virtual reality and mental imagery towards travel inspiration and visit intention

“…VR‐related efforts in the prospective phase of the customer journey should aim to raise travellers' inspiration by generating engaging VR experiences; thus, VR facilitates prospective tourists to see for themselves experiencing the destination via different images and events. Destination characteristics such as attractiveness, uniqueness, escapism and creative atmosphere can generate prospective tourists' mental imagery and travel inspiration (He et al, 2023; Tsaur et al, 2022; Wei et al, 2023; Xue et al, 2022). However, destinations managers should view tourists as humans, caring about their wellbeing not only while travelling.…”

“…The potential negatives consequences of rich pictorial information generated by VR on travel inspiration should be investigated. Users' fatigue (Wei et al, 2023), perceived similarity with the destination (Deng et al, 2019) and less positive tourists' reaction when the information is related to a psychologically proximal destination (Jia et al, 2021) may constitute research priorities.…”

“…Because the inspiration‐by and the inspiration‐to components are causally linked (Böttger et al, 2017), the authors seriously consider the serial process of inspired‐by and inspired‐to. To validate this line of thought, the current research effort scrutinised the positive relationship between the two stages of inspiration, as presented in other studies as well (Liu et al, 2022; Wei et al, 2023; Xue et al, 2022). Thus, prospective travellers feel higher behavioural inspiration (inspired‐to) and consequently, one way to experience more the destination is by visiting it.…”

“…Following the latest stream of tourism research, place attachment and openness to experience have been found to exert positive influence on tourist inspiration (Khoi et al, 2020). Destination characteristics such as attractiveness, uniqueness and creative atmosphere also increase tourists' inspiration (He et al, 2023; Tsaur et al, 2022; Wei et al, 2023; Xue et al, 2022). In the hospitality context, Kwon and Boger (2021) showed that customer inspiration may act as a mediator between brand experience and pro‐environmental intention.…”