Tourist participation, well-being and satisfaction: the mediating roles of service experience and tourist empowerment

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the role of tourist participation on their well-being and satisfaction. It also contributes to the transformative service research literature by examining the mediated effect of service experience and tourist empowerment on well-being and satisfaction. A structural model was developed and tested using a convenient sample of 597 tourists. Further, structure equation modelling technique and mediation analysis was performed to test the hypotheses. These findings revealed that tourist participation has a positive effect on satisfaction as well as eudaimonic well-being. The results showed that there is partial mediation effect of service experience on satisfaction as well as eudaimonic well-being. Also, tourist empowerment plays a mediating role between tourist participation and service experience. This study highlights the role of tourism firms to adopt a participatory approach wherein the tourist as collaborators can use their knowledge skills and abilities to help in better designing and delivery of tourism services.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourist participation
• eudaimonic well-being
• tourist satisfaction
• service experience
• tourist empowerment
• SEM

Disclosure statement

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