Self-congruity Theory in Red Tourism: A Study of Shaoshan City, China

ABSTRACT

As a heritage tourism and patriotism education in China, red tourism has strong value-expressive attributes, which makes it of great significance to examine self-congruity (SC) theory in a red destination. This study explores and compares the effects of SC and functional congruity (FC) on tourist satisfaction (TS) and destination loyalty (DL) by using structural equation modeling based on a sample of 332 tourists in Shaoshan city, a popular red destination in China. The findings indicate that SC of red tourists explains much higher variation of FC than that of other tourists. In addition, SC exerts equal effects on TS as FC and shows greater influence on DL than FC. This study sheds new lights on understanding the role of SC in destination marketing research and practices.

摘要

作为中国的遗产旅游和爱国主义教育的重要形式, 红色旅游具有鲜明的价值属性, 检验自我一致性理论在红色目的地情境中的适用性, 对于加强红色旅游目的地营销具有重要的参考价值。本研究基于在中国典型红色目的地——韶山市收集的332份针对游客的调查问卷, 运用结构方程模型方法检验了自我一致性 (SC) 和功能一致性 (FC) 对目的地满意度 (TS), 忠诚度 (DL) 的影响。研究表明, 红色旅游目的地游客自我一致性解释功能一致性变异的程度要高于邮轮旅游等类型的游客。此外, 自我一致性对游客满意度的影响与功能一致性相同, 但它对目的地忠诚的影响显著大于功能一致性。本研究为自我一致性理论在红色旅游目的地营销中的应用提供了实证依据。

KEYWORDS:

• Self-congruity
• functional congruity
• tourist satisfaction
• destination loyalty
• red tourism

关键词:

• 自我一致性
• 功能一致性
• 旅游者满意度
• 目的地忠诚
• 红色旅游

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of Hunan Province, China (to Meijing Zhou) under Grant (No. 15YBA261).

Notes on contributors

Meijing Zhou

Meijing Zhou is PH.D. Candidate in Business School at Central South University, Changsha, China. Her research interests focus on tourism marketing, destination management, red tourism, and resources and environmental economics (E-mail: [email protected]).

Le Yan

Le Yan is Master Student in School of Management and Economics at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China. Her research interests focus on enterprise ecosystem and platform (E-mail: [email protected]).

Fuyuan Wang

Fuyuan Wang is Post-Doctoral Researcher in Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research at Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. His research interests are tourism geography and management (E-mail: [email protected]).

Mingshui Lin

Mingshui Lin is Associate Professor in College of Tourism at Fujian Normal University, Science and Technology Road, Fuzhou, China. His research interests are tourism poverty alleviation and national comprehensive tourism destinations (E-mail: [email protected]).