| Digital technology has opened up an era of symbiosis between the virtual and the real.Red tourism and digital technology have a "natural" fit,as the high demand for interactive experiences and field experiences in red virtual tourism determines that red tourism needs virtual technology to help it（virtual tourism helps to bring tourists closer to red historical events）,while at the same time,virtual tourism also needs fertile ground like red tourism to enhance its interactivity（red revolutionary events provide a rich source of material for interactive experiences in virtual tourism）.As a unique spiritual tourism product in China,red tourism aims to help tourists inspire patriotic emotions,construct red memories and form national identities,thus guiding them to combine their individual destinies with the future of their country and nation.Red memory is the collective memory of the aforementioned great dream,and plays an important role in consolidating the ruling foundation of the Communist Party of China,strengthening the legitimacy of the regime and constructing identity.However,with the onslaught of intergenerational memory decline,multicultural collision,technocracy and historical nihilism,contemporary red memory is in constant decline and facing the crisis of fragmentation and disintegration.Although the role of red tourism in writing,constructing and passing on red memory is becoming increasingly evident,existing research still lacks the necessary academic follow-up on the mechanisms and influencing factors involved.At the same time,the rapid development of the Internet and the promotion and application of high technology have provided a new perspective and development model for red tourism.Virtual technology allows travellers to break through the limitations of time and space,to return to the red era and experience the most ’authentic’ red tourism.However,compared to the onsite experience and personal insight that comes with on-the-ground tourism,red virtual tourism should be more than a simple sensory stimulus;it should also be full of introspective elements that truly touch the hearts of tourists.From this perspective,existing research has to some extent overlooked the spiritual attributes of red tourism and has not yet included it in the virtual tourism research context.Under the wave of digitalisation,it is important to focus on the mechanisms and factors that influence the willingness of red virtual tourism to travel in the field,in order to inherit the red gene and walk the contemporary Long March,to discover the differences between red tourism and red virtual tourism in terms of experience process and memory transmission,to clarify the digital construction process of red memory and its contemporary value,and to help promote the digital transformation of tourism.In order to respond to the academic concern of enriching the basic theory of red tourism,exploring the logic of red memory transmission,responding to the academic initiative of studying the differences in the behaviour of different virtual tourists,and responding to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s important discussion on the value of red spirit.This study introduces red tourism into a virtual tourism research context,and takes the digital pavilion of the Jinggang Mountain Revolution Museum,the spiritual home of the Chinese Communists,as a case study to investigate how tourists use the red virtual tourism experience to construct red memories and their contemporary values,and to be motivated to travel on the ground.This underlying psychological mechanism is interpreted.Firstly,based on a review of the literature on virtual tourism,red tourism and red memory,a scale on red virtual tourism experience,red memory and its contemporary value was developed.Secondly,on the basis of clarifying respondents’ overall and differential perceptions of red virtual tourism experiences,red memories and their contemporary values,theoretical hypotheses were formulated to construct and test a structural equation model of the influence of red virtual tourism experiences on red memories and their contemporary values.The findings basically support the conceptual model of "Red Virtual Tourism Experience-Red Memory and its Contemporary Values-Willingness to Travel on the Ground" proposed in this paper.Specifically,the findings include three aspects:（1）tourists’ cognitive experiences,awe and empathy in virtual tourism help to enhance red memories;（2）red memories formed by tourists in virtual tourism positively contribute to spiritual meaning,cultural confidence and national identity;and（3）national identity formed by tourists in virtual tourism positively contributes to willingness to travel in the field.Based on the findings,the contributions of this research are:（1）research on virtual tourism:this study is based on the frontier of the development of the experience economy,and takes red tourism as the entry point to discover new evidence to promote tourists’ willingness to travel in the field,deepening the existing literature on the influence mechanism and connotation of the behavioural mechanism of virtual tourism,which has certain theoretical significance for understanding the relationship between virtual tourism and field tourism and enriching the study of virtual tourism.At the same time,it further promotes the interdisciplinary integration of digital technology effect research and tourism experience research,which strongly contributes to the development and improvement of the tourism discipline system,and has certain practical effects on the design and planning of virtual tourism and the sustainable development of virtual tourism industry;（2）research on red tourism: this study combines the technological trend of red tourism digitization,takes the technological characteristics of red virtual tourism breaking through time and space as the fulcrum,develops a red virtual tourism experience scale with cognitive experience and emotional experience as the core,and explores the differences between red tourism and red virtual tourism in terms of experience process and memory construction,which has certain theoretical significance for enriching red tourismrelated theories and exploring the relationship between red tourism and red virtual tourism.This study will help red tourism to develop a new development path of "technology empowerment and people-oriented",and has strong practical guidance significance for the complementary and integrated development of online and offline red tourism;（3）research on red memory: this study focuses on the construction path and value impact of red memory in virtual space,and the research results are beneficial to strengthen people’s self-psychological orientation,form correct political cognition and political emotion,and then form stable national,state and political identity,which has important theoretical and practical significance for passing on the red gene,interpreting contemporary values and walking the contemporary Long March.The practical implications of this paper are also reflected in three aspects:（1）for red tourism: the only way to win its heart is to move its emotions.Red tourism destinations need to integrate digital technology,innovate the use of historical materials,strengthen the field experience and focus on emotional motivation;（2）for red virtual tourism: internalise it in the heart and externalise it in action.Red virtual tourism designers should accurately understand the spiritual attributes of red tourism and focus on creating a sense of ritual in red tourism;（3）to red memory and its contemporary value: as a special "historical deposit",the inheritance and deepening of red memory requires the full excavation,preservation and proper use of the various symbolic resources of red memory,and on the basis of this,we need to combine our personal life experiences with the elements of the times to give new contemporary value to red memory and to walk the contemporary Long March. |
