Visitors' engagement and authenticity: Japanese heritage consumption

Abstract

Understanding the sense of authenticity of heritage attractions is important for tourism management and marketing because presentation, interpretation and verification has a direct bearing on motivations to visit and engage with heritage tourism sites. This paper establishes relationships among the concepts of culturally specific motivation, perception of authenticity, engagement and attendant behavioral consequences based on domestic visitors' experiences at Japanese heritage sites. It further extends Kolar and Zabkar's (2010) model of authenticity by including concepts of serious leisure, heritage related behaviors, self-connection and their effects over engagement using Partial Least Square, whereby both formative and reflective scales are included. The structural model is tested with a sample of 768 visitors in a culturally specific setting of Japanese heritage sites. The empirical validation of the conceptual model supports the research hypotheses. These findings contribute to a better understanding of visitors' perceptions and valuation of authenticity in Japanese tourist attractions. Several implications can be drawn from the study findings and interesting directions for future research are provided.

Measuring host sincerity: scale development and validation

“…Existentially authentic experiences are not simply about visiting sites of socially constructed significance, but participating and experiencing something fulfilling, engaging, and fundamentally dissimilar to the normality of everyday life (Daugstad and Kirchengast, 2013). Reisinger and Steiner (2006) and Kolar and Žabkar (2010) found that both existential and object-based authenticity were related to cultural motivation, while Bryce et al (2015) suggest that cultural motivation positively influences existential authenticity.…”

“…This involves extending the CBA (cf. Bryce et al, 2015;Zhou et al, 2013) by incorporating a host sincerity scale into the model. Thus, this updated model explores relationships surrounding cultural motivation, authenticity, host sincerity, and memorable tourism experiences.…”

“…Destination-specific objects amplify visitors' perceptions of the authenticity of travel if they meet expectations (Gursoy et al, 2004). Studies have explored the role of object-based authenticity within hospitality and tourism, with emphasis on the relationship between the concept and existential authenticity (Wang, 1999), cultural motivation (Bryce et al, 2015) and tourists' attitudes and loyalty (Zhou et al, 2013).…”

World heritage site management: a case study of sacred sites and pilgrimage routes in the Kii mountain range, Japan

“…As the findings above imply, such positive changes appear to have occurred in Kii WHS. As noted previously, WHS status may function as an indicator of objective authenticity for tourists (Poria et al, 2013;Smith, 2002) and create a marketable brand for the destination (Bryce et al, 2015). WHS status seems to have worked on Kii as a marker of authenticity and quality for foreign tourists and may be a reason why Kii has seen an evident increase in the number of overseas tourists since its WHS inscription.…”

“…WHS 5 status may also be an ostensible marker of authenticity and a measure of quality (Bianchi, 2002;Poria, Reichel & Cohen, 2013;Smith, 2002). In short, acquiring WHS status can mean external validation and 'branding' by an international authenticating organisation such as UNESCO (Bryce, Curran, O'Gorman, & Taheri, 2015).…”