A Study On The Factors Influencing Tourists’ Sense Of Happiness In Rural Homestay Inns From The Perspective Of Embodied Cognition

Since ancient times,the word "happiness" has almost covered every fantasy of human beings about beautiful things,and the pursuit of happiness has been cultivated as the most important goal in all ages.As one of the top five happiness industries,tourism plays a pivotal role in enhancing people’s sense of well-being.At the same time,with the introduction of policies such as "common prosperity" and "rural revitalization",the countryside has gradually become the preferred destination for people to visit.As an important way to alleviate poverty,rural tourism,combined with the advantages of the happiness industry,will become the engine of rural industrial revitalization.As an advanced development form of rural tourism,rural homestay inn plays an important role in reshaping the charm of the countryside and empowering rural revitalization.However,in the process of rural homestay inn development,there still exists a contradiction between people’s pursuit of tourism quality and the blind transformation and chaotic development of homestay inn.In order to alleviate this contradiction and enhance the level of tourists’ happiness,the influencing factors of tourists’ happiness need to be explored in depth.A review of existing research results shows that travel experience is an important factor affecting travelers’ happiness.However,most of the previous studies on tourism experience paid attention to the subjectivity of tourists,but ignored the role of the body.In addition,most of the methods used in the studies are regression analysis under hypothesis testing,structural equation modeling,etc.These methods regard the factors that affect tourists’ well-being as independent variables,without considering the possibility of joint influence between these factors.Therefore in order to enrich the existing influencing factors,it is of great interest to explore the influence of individualised cognitive factors on tourists’ well-being from a combinatorial perspective.What are the travel experiences that affect tourists’ happiness in rural homestay inn tourism?This study explores the factors influencing the well-being of rural homestay inn travellers in the context of embodied cognitive theory.Firstly,based on the literature review,embodied cognitive theory is introduced into the tourism experience,which is divided into three components: physical experience,contextual experience and perceptual experience,and six sub-factors(sensory experience,somatic experience,ambient context,interaction context,emotional experience and meaningful experience)are established to explain these three components.Tourist well-being also divided into two dimensions: subjective well-being and psychological well-being.Secondly,two studies were designed: Study 1 followed the traditional steps to examine the independent effects of embodied cognitive experiences on the happiness of rural homestay inn travellers;Study 2explored the combined effects of embodied cognitive experiences on the happiness of rural homestay inn travellers.In this study,online and offline questionnaires were used to collect data,and the comprehensive research results of SPSS,Amos and fsQCA were used,and three main conclusions were drawn.(1)The six sub factors of embodied cognitive experience can act both individually and in combination with other factors,and when they are combined to affect the well-being of travellers,the effect of the individual factor is influenced by the other factors with which it is combined.(2)The emotional and situational experiences in the perceptual experience are more in line with the needs of rural homestay inn travellers,thus contributing to a higher level of well-being among travellers.(3)Sensory experiences have implicit influences on the happiness of rural homestay inn travellers and need to be reinforced by other factors before they come to the fore.Finally,based on the findings of the study,three management implications are proposed for the development of rural homestay inn tourism,and research gaps and future perspectives are outlined.The overall research contributions of this thesis are as follows:(1)introducing the theory of embodied cognition into the study of tourists’ happiness,which enriches the theoretical perspective;(2)taking rural homestay inn tourists as the research object and exploring the factors affecting tourists’ happiness enriches the literature on happiness;(3)using fsQCA to examine the combined effect of factors from a combinatorial perspective not only expands the field of application of fsQCA,but also provides a new methodological perspective for studying the wellbeing of rural homestay inn travellers.