Psychological factors affecting memorable tourism experiences

ABSTRACT

This study tries to explore psychological components of memorable tourist experience (MTE) that are most likely to recall tourists’ memories. Urban residents from three representative cities in China were selected as research samples, and totally 301 usable questionnaires were used for data analysis. The results showed that the recollection of MTE was positively affected by novelty, involvement and social interaction. It was also suggested that hedonism and novelty had positive effects on the vividness of MTEs significantly. Additionally, in the context of Chinese culture, two new psychological factors, social interaction and perceived serendipity, resulted in different effects on the MTE.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourist experience
• memory
• memorable tourism experience
• psychological factors
• urban residents
• age
• structural equation model
• moderating variable
• Guangdong
• Chinese context

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Chaozhi Zhang http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2588-8838

Keji Huang http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5048-1971