How does cultural heritage destination digitalization influence tourists’ attitudes? The role of constructive authenticity and technology-destination fit

ABSTRACT

This study examined how cultural heritage destination digitalization influences tourists’ attitudes by analyzing the mediating effect of constructive authenticity and the moderating effect of technology-destination fit. We tested the theoretical model using data from 336 tourists who had traveled to cultural heritage destinations in the previous three months. The findings indicate that cultural heritage destination digitalization positively impacts tourists’ attitudes. Technology-destination fit moderates the relationship between cultural heritage destination digitalization and constructive authenticity and the mediating effect of constructive authenticity. These findings provide managerial implications for destination marketing organizations to improve their performance through digitalization.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism marketing
• tourism destination digitalization
• cultural heritage destination
• constructive authenticity
• tourist attitude
• technology-destination fit
• digital technology
• TTF model
• digital transformation
• destination management organization

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China under Grant number [20BGL116].