A multi-method study of the emotional mechanism linking seaside destination attributes and tourists’ revisit intention

ABSTRACT

The advent of the post-pandemic era has increased the emotional rewards destinations need to provide. However, the psychological process of generating tourists’ revisit intention remains unclear in research on destination attributes and revisit intention. Existing research has many drawbacks, suggesting important research gaps, including using generalized mediating variables, focusing on conventional tourism scenarios, and overreliance on regression-based techniques. This study fills the gaps using multiple methods (qualitative and quantitative methods and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis) to examine the linkage between seaside destination attributes and tourists’ revisit intentions using Sanya, China, as a case study. The innovations of this study include the detailed emotional path of tourists’ revisit intention, the use of multiple methods, and the identification of the critical emotional variable. Managerial implications about marketing and service entry point are also provided.

KEYWORDS:

• Destination attributes
• place identity
• people-place emotional empathy
• seaside destinations
• post-pandemic era

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Major Humanities and Social Sciences Research Projects in Zhejiang higher education institutions [grant number 2023QN078].