Heritage Image and Attitudes toward a Heritage Site: Do They Really Mediate the Relationship between User-Generated Content and Travel Intentions toward a Heritage Site?

Abstract

Traveling to heritage sites represents a growing sector with great potential in the context of heritage tourism, which is a relevant topic but has received little scholarly attention. The present study tries to bridge this gap by investigating the mediating role of heritage image and attitudes toward a heritage site in the relationship between user-generated content (UGC) and travel intention toward a heritage site. In particular, we applied partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), which is a relatively popular new method, instead of the traditionally used covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) method. The rise in popularity of PLS-SEM has been particularly noticeable since 2013, but in the area of heritage tourism, research is still in an early stage of development because the heritage discipline has hardly exploited the benefits of this approach. We proposed a multimediation model for heritage tourism to address this relatively new research avenue. It was discovered that exogenous variables directly and indirectly influenced travel intentions toward a heritage site through their mediators (i.e., heritage image and attitudes toward a heritage site). The findings provide an appropriate empirical and theoretical conclusion as well as valuable insights for heritage management organizations (HMOs) into the performance of heritage tourism, both for local professionals and the host communities that assist in increasing the development of heritage tourism.

Testing Travel Intention Model: An Empirical Study of Borobudur Temple

“…As one of world heritage, this research aims to assess the impact antecedent variables of travel intention to Borobudur temple. This research replicated the travel intention model developed by (Mehmood et al, 2018). The important of the model to be replicated because there is not many literature that integrates antecedent variables in predicting travel intention to heritage sites (Mehmood et al, 2018).…”

“…This research replicated the travel intention model developed by (Mehmood et al, 2018). The important of the model to be replicated because there is not many literature that integrates antecedent variables in predicting travel intention to heritage sites (Mehmood et al, 2018). Moreover, not many studies include technologyrelated variables such as user-generated content (hereafter UGC) and commercial word-ofmouth in predicting travel intention.…”

“…The travel intention to heritage site can be influenced by many factors. Specifically, according to a model developed by (Mehmood et al, 2018), travel intention is predicted by several main variables as follows: traditional word-of-mouth, commercial WOM, UGC, heritage image, and attitudes towards heritage site (Figure 1).…”

Geleneksel Wom Ni̇yeti̇ni̇n Planli Davraniş Teori̇si̇ Bağlaminda İncelenmesi̇: Türk Dağcilari Örneği̇

“…The study contributes to a theoretical understanding of mountaineers by adapting TPB model. First, while previous research on WOM has examined WOM as an antecedent (exogenous) (Zarrad & Debab, 2015;Abubakar, 2016;Mehmood, Liang, & Gu, 2018), the proposed model (Figure 1) uses TWOM as an endogenous construct in the context of TPB. Second, although much research has been done on WOM (Allsop, Bassett & Hoskins, 2007;de Matos & Rossi, 2008), it still seems inadequate to adapt TPB to WOM.…”

How Do Destinations Frame Cultural Heritage? Content Analysis of Portugal’s Municipal Websites

“…The latest trends explore the use and impact of information and communication technologies [2,3] in these cross-cutting areas. Such is the case of social networks [4][5][6][7], e-WOM [8], applications for mobile devices [9,10], big data [11,12], virtual and augmented reality [13,14] and video games [15,16].…”