The Study Of Recreationists' Place Attachment And Loyalty

With demand for leisure and recreation constantlyincreasing in China, the pursuit of excellent leisure environment and high quality of leisure life has became the common aspiration of Chinese. On the one hand, urban parks, with beautiful natural ecological environment and good infrastructure, become the important place for citizens' recreation. On the other hand, the diversity of leisure activities and places in urban, in turn, impacts the status of urban park.Place attachment is the emotional bond between person and place and composed of place identity and place dependence, which is highly influenced by the activities an individual participated and his or her experience and perception. When a recreationist leaves a place, he or she is willing to revisit or recommend this place or tend to choose this place in the decision-making process in future. In that case we say he is loyal to this place. Actually, the place that a recreationist loyal to is the perceived place which is different from the objective place just exist there. So applying the concept of place attachment to analyze the formation mechanism of loyalty from the subjective perception of recreationists is conducive to the scientific planning and management of recreation place.This dissertation takes the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum Scenic Spot as the case study. Based on the data from questionnaire survey, this paper firstly divides place attachment into two dimensions by factor analysis and classifies the recreationists by cluster analysis, then finds out the demographic characteristics and loyalty of different types of recreationists by cross contingency table analysis, and then analyze the degree of recreationists' satisfaction, place dependence, place identity and loyalty in different scenic spots, finally builds structure equation model to study the effect of place attachment on loyalty formation mechanism. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) Most recreationists are relatively attached and loyalty to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum Scenic Spot. The degree of place identity is stronger than place dependence in the aspect of place attachment, and the degree of recommendation intention is slightly higher than revisit intention in the aspect of loyalty.(2) According to the level of attachment between recreationists and the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum Scenic Spot, recreationists can be classified into three categories:the very-attached recreationists, the relatively-attached recreationists, the general-attached recreationists. The one who is relatively attached to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum Scenic Spot has the largest proportion and the one who is very attached to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum Scenic Spot has the lowest proportion.(3) The very-attached recreationists are middle-aged and elderly man whose occupations are mainly public officials and enterprises. The relatively-attached recreationists are mainly aged 25-34, having a bachelor degree or above. The general-attachment recreationists are predominantly female students under the age of 24. As the level of place attachment rising, the degree of recommendation and revisit intention also enhances.(4) Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum scored highest on the four measurement indictors:satisfaction, revisit intention, recommendation intention and attachment degree, followed by Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum and Zhongshan Botanical Garden, and the White Horse Park scored lowest. Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum, Ming Emperors Tomb and Zhongshan Botanical Garden have the top largest number of recreationists. With the increase of age and the decreases of the distance from their homes to the Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum Scenic Spot, the number of scenic spots recreationists visiting increase. The average number of visiting scenic spots by tourists living outside Nanjing is below three, which indicates that the other scenic spots except Yat-sen's Mausoleum and Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum have littler attraction to the tourists.(5) Satisfaction affects loyalty through place attachment. The results of structural equation model shows that the direct effect of recreation satisfaction on recreation loyalty is positive, and place attachment serves as an intermediary between recreation satisfaction and recreation loyalty. Place dependence has a direct positive influence on place identity, and its effect on place identity is greater than the effect on loyalty. Place attachment has a significant positive effect on loyalty, and the effect intensity is greater than the satisfaction's effect on loyalty. Place identity and place dependence influence loyalty differently, because the direct action of place identity on loyalty is larger than that of place dependence on loyalty and place dependence total impact on loyalty is greater than place identity's.(6)The process of revisiting decision-making is as follows:when a recreationist create recreational need and if he is not attached to it, he will collect new information to make decisions; when a recreationist create recreational need and if he is attached to it, he will make a decision after a comparison of the alternative place and attachment place; when a recreationist create recreational needs and if he is very attached and loyalty to it, he will directly revisit the place.This dissertation classifies the recreationists into three categories according their level of place attachment and proposes the decision-making process should be took into consideration in place attachment, which is innovative and theoretical. Conclusions in this paper are helpful for the managers to determine the target market and make good planning and construction and scientific management, which is practical.