Studv On The Relationship Among Tourist-to-Tourist Interaction,Experience Value And Satisfaction In Ancient Town Tourism

Great conflicts and crisis have emerged in ancient town tourism since the capacity of resources for local district is usually limited and the number of tourists is increasing. Meanwhile tourists’experience has also been influenced by other tourists. In China’s ancient town tourism, interactions between tourists happen frequently. Therefore, it is supposed to be emphasized in related tourism study. As in service market research, there have been some studies of customer-to-customer interactions. There have been abundant studies of host-to-guest interactions in tourism as well. However, few studies of tourist-to-tourist interactions have been found. So the study of tourist-to-tourist interactions in ancient towns are worthy of further study.This study aims to explore the relaitionships among tourist-to-tourist interaction, tourism experience value and satisfaction with comprehensive application of social science study methods. Firsty, literature reviews present related research results of tourist-to-tourist interaction, tourism experience value and satisfaction. A conceptual study model is proposed. Secondly, this study applies semi-structured interviews with tourism scholars, tourism planning professors and tourists to gain a deeper understanding of the conception and content of tourist-to-tourist interactions. Research hypotheses are raised by combining literature review and interview’s output. Thirdly, this study uses tourist questionnaires to gather datas which are then calculated by SPSS and AMOS for futher analysis. Fourthly, all research hypotheses are testified. Major conclusions include:①Tourstist-to-tourist interactions contain the quantity and the quality of interaction. The quantity of tourst interaction is structured by3factors, interation frequency, impact on choices and impact on behavior. The quality of tourst interaction is structured by2factors, interaction valence and intense.②Interaction frequency can negatively effect affective experience value. Impact on choices can positively affect affective experience value. Interaction valence and intense can positively affect the all three factors of experience value.③There are no directly positive effect between interaction frequency, impact on choices, interaction intense and satisfaction. Interaction frequency and impact on choices can affect satisfaction through affective experience value, while interaction intense can affect satisfaction through the all three factors of experience value. Only interaction valence can positively affect satisfaction directly.④There are no differences among different customer groups divided by age and companion pattern.While, tourists from different gender, education background, tour type and income level appear to have diffirent acknowledge of tourist-to-tourist interaction, experience value and satisfaction. Finally, based on these results this study propose some recommendations on the design of the tourist interaction interface in ancient town tourism:improve tourist-to-tourist interaction valence and intense, control tourist number, optimize interactive interface, promote positive interaction, avoid negative interaction, cultivate tourists’interest in interaction, so as to create unique tourism experience and to improve satisfaction.