The Influencing Fators And Acting Mechanism Of Tourism Destination Image In Heritage Destination

The number of world heritage in China has exceeded 50 in 2016 which ranked second in the world.Heritage which act as tourist attractions has become a new way of travelling.However,the development of heritage tourism in China face some challenges,such as lack of promotion,poor destination image construction,which make them unknown by the tourist and have difficulties in heritage protection,thus constraint the development of heritage tourism industry.Destination image plays an important role in the development heritage destinations,which make it important to explore the influencing factors and acting mechanism of destination image in heritage destination and clarify their relationship.Based on the former research done at home and abroad,we reviewed the related literature of authenticity theory,place theory and heritage activation theory respectively.This study built a theory framework which contain seven variables,including tourism motivation,the authentic experience,familiarity,cognitive image,affective image,place attachment,heritage protection behavior,the hypothesis was put forward on the basis of the theory.We did case study of five typical heritage destinations in Changan-Tianshan silk road heritage corridor and applied the method of questionnaire for empirical research.591 questionnaires was collected and the data was analyzed with the help of SPSS 19.0 and Amos 19.0.Reliability test,validity test,hypothesis testing,SEM,analysis of variance and compare analysis was conducted to draw the conclusions of this research.Through data analysis,we found that:(1)Most of the tourists in silk road heritage destination are women,the intellectuals are the main group.They are mainly young and middle-aged who work as staff or students,their education background concentrated on undergraduate,graduate and above.(2)When it comes to the social demographic characteristics of tourists,age,education background,job and income level,expect gender,significantly influence each variable in this study.(3)The cognitive image act as an intervening variable,which has a significant positive influence on the emotional image,and has a mediate effect on other variables.Tourist motives,the authentic experience,familiar are the important influencing factors which will effect on the image of heritage destination.(4)The cognitive image of visitors has significantly positive influence on tourists of place attachment and heritage protection behavior,emotional image is one of the important factors which will affect tourists place attachment,but not the heritage protection behavior of tourists.The place attachment is an intervening variable,which will also impact on tourists' heritage protection behavior.After researching the influencing factors and the effect of destination image in heritage destinations,this study put forward some suggestions which will boost the sustainable development of heritage tourism:(1)Making full use of the effects of heritage destination image which may boost the heritage destination develop in a sustainable way.(2)Shaping the destination image according to its influencing factors to enrich the travelling experience of tourists.(3)Making efforts to maintain the emotional ties of tourists and encourage them to involve in the protection of heritage.Through this research,we analyze the formation of destination image of heritage destinations and its impact on tourist behaviors which will make contribution to the improvement of destination image.It will help to slove the dilemma of heritage tourism and heritage protection,which make heritage tourism develop in a sustainable way.