A Research On Experience Of The Authenticity Of Tourists

The alienation for existence and the chase of public spirit not only intensifies the crisis of self-losing and self-alienation,but also hastens the longing for authenticity.In most cases,people cannot freely rely on their inner experience and willingness to live.While,to leave the habitual work and social relations and engage in leisure activities in nonlocal setting is a meaningful way to return to the true self.Thus,the life style of tourism is more and more popular,and the scale of needs of in-depth tourism experience keeps increasing.To analyse and produce the experience of authenticity to tourists are significantly meaningful for the development of fundamental tourism theory and the upgrade of tourism industry.The importance of following the inner feeling,willingness and values to mental health is particularly underlined by recent psychological studies,and rich discussions have been conducted on authenticity.While,in the field of tourism,the discussions on authenticity mainly focus on objectives of tourism,and there is an extremely shortage of specific and systematic research on authenticity of tourists.Therefore,how does tourism help people return to true self?What is the particular connotation of authenticity of tourists?What is the influence factors and effects of the authenticity of tourist?To answer these questions,this study set out from the general authenticity dilemma in daily life.Based on studies of Humanistic Psychology and the analysis of online notes of tourists,this study pointed out the significance of tourism on the authenticity dilemma.Then based on literature analysis and text analysis of online notes and interview of tourists,this study established the scale of authenticity of tourists,and explored the multidimensional connotation and structure of the authenticity of tourists through a sequence of factor analyses.Structural equation model was then used to test the theoretical model of the influence relationships of authenticity of tourists.This study achieved several main conclusions.Firstly,Modern tourism places people in the new people-place relationship,thus giving people the opportunity of romantic gaze and experiential self-concern,and the dilemma of authenticity is therefore relieved by the ways of self-regression,self-shaping,openness of organismic experience,and the replenishment of emotional energy during tourism.Secondly,authenticity of tourists is composed by "self-regression","self-discover"and "spontaneous communities".Thirdly,empathy of the service,positive emotion of the tourists,and the fulfilment of the autonomy can significantly increase the authenticity of tourists,and the authenticity of tourists has positive effect on the behaviour intention of the tourists.Main innovations of this research are:firstly,the perspective of the authenticity of tourists in this study is distinct to the main perspective that focuses on the authenticity of tourism resources or products in the previous studies.Secondly,this study conceptualized and operationalized the authenticity of tourists,and verifies the multi-dimensional construction of the concept.Thirdly,the study of authenticity in the temporary and nonlocal context of tourism can effectively enrich the existing psychological studies of authenticity,which mainly investigate authenticity in the context of long-term relationships in daily life.Fourthly,this study introduced the service management perspective into the study of authenticity,combing the market elements to the traditional authenticity issues that mainly concerned in the non-economic setting.This study can offer theoretical and practical guidance for the related enterprises to produce and increase the experience of authenticity of tourists,and it also has several theoretical contributions.Firstly,the discussion on the dialectical relationship between tourism and authenticity explores the new perspective to analyse the function and significant of tourism.Secondly,the theoretical and empirical analysis explain and verify the construction of authenticity of tourist.Thirdly,the scale of authenticity of tourists that explored by this study helps extending the related research.Last but not least,the relationship model set up in this study lays the foundation of the future research system.