Study On Driving Factors Of Tourists’Loyalty In Religious Pilgrimige Site

Nowadays, as human’s spiritual and cultural life has been alienated day bay day, the religious destination gets a great favor from tourist for its deep cultural connotation and rich history landscape. Mazu pilgrimage in Putian Meizhou Island in Fujian province deeply attracts thousands of pilgrims and sightseers for the unique status of the ancestor temple of Mazu and the beautiful coastal scenery. However, a survey reported that the satisfaction of tourists’experience in Meizhou is not high. As satisfaction plays an important role in tourists’loyalty and the lack of research about tourists’loyalty driving mechanism on religious destination at home and abroad. Given these situations, this thesis takes Meizhou Island as a case study of destination, trying to explores the related impacts among the tourists’motivation, service quality, perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty, which based on the perspective of contrastive analysis of sightseers and pilgrims. Hoping that it will be helpful to the protection and propagation of Mazu culture and the sustainable development of tourism in Meizhou.First of all, the thesis performed factor analysis to tourists’motivation and perceived quality, investigated whether the perceptions on perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty among tourists with different demographic characteristics are different, and also analyzed the correlation between variables. Second, based on literature review, the paper proposed a conceptual model of tourism destination loyalty with tourists’motivation, perceived quality, perceived value and satisfaction as antecedent variables. Then, verifying the model with the first-hand information obtained from field investigation, and explaining the analysis result with relevant theory. The paper got the results as following:1) pilgrims and sightseers have emphasize on their own motivation, while the motive of " improving oneself" like improving the relationship and relax are both concerned by the two groups;2)pilgrims’perception on service quality is higher than sightseers’, and both of them pay low perception on catering and price of the scenic spot;3) perceptions on perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty are different among tourists of different demographic characteristics;4) the path analysis verified the conclusions obtained by using the theory of SET, and place attachment in pilgrims play an important role in the formation of loyalty;5) satisfaction and perceived value are respectively the most critical variables in the sightseers’ loyalty model of and pilgrims’, and perceived value, satisfaction and perceived quality are important mediating variables as well, what’s more, the travel motivation has an important impact on "searching for alternative destination" in sightseers’loyalty model;6) the sightseers are relatively loyalty, while the pilgrims are absolute loyalty. Finally, the paper put forward some corresponding strategies and suggestions on the cultivation and promotion of tourists’loyalty based on the results of empirical analysis and the information got from investigation.