| Coming to the 21st Century, with the warming of the national economy, China's tourism industry is gradually emerging from the developing industry to the pillar industry. While the tourism consumption being touted, it brings some problems. On the one hand, due to the homogenization competition of the tourism attractions, the authorities need to think about how to improve the tourist's satisfaction and loyalty. On the other hand, because of the increase of the tourist's travel frequency and the intensification of the tourist attraction's management difficulty,the authorities also need to think about how to reduce the tourist's immoral behaviors which may occur. To solve the above problems, regarding to the tourism studies, more and more attention are paid on by the tourist's behavior research, and topics like how to get tourist actively recommend the destination to others by word-of-mouth and how to get tourist positively re-visit the destination become the major concern of such tourist behavior research. At the same time, the cutting-edge topic from the tourism research also includes how the tourism activity provides a positive role in the physiological and psychological aspects to the tourist, in order to reduce the possibility of the tourist's immoral behaviors and uncivilized behaviors which may appear. According to the literature review of the last two decades, it is found that a number of studies have suggested or made inference that the emotional experience coming from the tourism process can fully dominate the behavior of the tourist. For example, when the tourist gets the positive emotions in the traveling, they are prone to have the word-of-mouth and re-visit behaviors for the tourism destinations and also restrain some of the immoral behaviors because the tourist's positive emotions from the tourism are able to promote tourist's positive behaviors and inhibit the tourist's negative behaviors. The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions which comes from the matured positive psychology and The Social Intuitionist Model Theory from psychology has already provided the sufficient theoretical basis. Therefore, after considering the characteristics of the main types of the tourism attractions in China, the present research makes the emotion of awe, which is one of the typical positive emotions in the tourism activities in China's main tourism attractions,as the starting point,to construct the theoretical models and to design the empirical studies and the experimental studies with the cue of "appraisal the environment caused the awe emotion?the tourist's awe emotion?promote the tourist's positive behavior and restrain the tourist's negative behavior" to discuss how awe emotion promotes the tourist's satisfaction and positive behaviors like loyalty,and how awe emotion causes the tourist's moral judgment and intention more rigorous to restrain the tourist's negative behaviors. On the specific contents,this research firstly does the literature review to summarize the deficiencies and the lack of empirical contents from the past studies, and then deduces the hypothesis. After that, this research proposes the theoretical conceptual models, which including two empirical studies and two experimental studies. By using the statistical software like SPSS 20, Mplus 7, and etc, and by applying the technical methods like questionnaires surveying, quasi-experiment and laboratory experiment, the data from this research are deeply analyzed to support the hypothesis from the empirical and the experimental studies. The main contents and results from the studies are below:(1) The awe emotion comes from the appraisal on the perceived vastness and need for accommodation from the outside environment, and further promotes the tourist's satisfaction and loyalty. The empirical studies include two sub-studies. By applying the Appraising Theory of Emotion and the Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions, by collecting data from questionnaire surveying in the Emei Mountain tourism attraction, by using the technique of Structural Equation Model (SEM), the results from sub-study 1 indicates that the tourism environment with characteristics like vast, mysterious and so on, can induce the tourist's awe emotion,witch moreover,to promote tourist's word-of-mouth and re-visit behaviors. The sub-study 2 also applies the theoretical conceptual model above as the basic model, and in the same way to use the SEM technique to analyze the data of the questionnaire surveying from Sichuan Sanxingdui Museum. The results form sub-study 2 indicates again that the tourist's awe emotion comes from tourist's appraisal that perception of the vastness for outside environment and perception of the smallness for inside oneself,and the two tourism environment dimensions, physical and cultural, could induce the tourist's awe experience. And moreover,the tourist's awe further promotes satisfaction and loyalty.(2) The awe emotion has the functions of pro-society and moral purity, and has the ability to restrain the tourist's immoral behavior. The experimental studies also include two sub-experiments. Based on the Social Intuitionist Model Theory in moral judgment, the experimental studies discuses the tourists' awe inspired from the tourism environment to impact the tourists' moral judgment and moral intention, and the different degree of such the impact from the ethical ideologies. Of that, the experimental studies made a reasonable explanation about the tourism activity's functionality which is good for tourists' sentiments cultivation by suppressing the tourists' immoral behaviors. In this study,firstly in the sub-experiment 1, a Quasi-experiment presented at the specific tourism attractions revealed that the tourists with higher ethical behaviors after they experienced awe which inspired from the particular tourism attractions. Secondly in the sub-experiment 2, through the Laboratory-experiment, two distinct positive emotions, awe and pleasure, are manipulated to verify that if the subject group stimulated with awe emotion they would show more positive moral judgment and moral intention in the tourism scenario, comparing with the other subject group which stimulated with pleasure emotion. Moreover, in the experiment this study also found that there is an interaction effects between the type of emotions (Awe and Pleasure)and the ethical ideologies (the high Relativism and the low Relativism). Specifically, for people with the high Relativism, if the subject group stimulated with awe emotion they would show more positive moral judgment than the subject group stimulated with pleasure emotion in the tourism scenario and more positive moral intention as well. In the other side,for people with the low Relativism, there is no significant difference of the tourists' moral judgment or moral intention between the two subject groups with awe inspiration or pleasure inspiration.In summary, the present research reveals the important role of tourist's awe emotion in the tourist behavior, which moreover to enrich the research framework about how the emotions impact on the tourist' behaviors. The results from this research also contribute some practical significance for market development and management of scenic tourism destinations. Finally,this research points out the limitations and shortcomings in the research process, and makes recommendations for the future research. |
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