Consumers as co-creators in community-based tourism experience: Impacts on their motivation and satisfaction

Abstract

A tourism experience is a continuous process. Yet, the following question remains an outstanding issue: How to account for a memorable experience when the experience encompasses periods that occur before, during, and after visiting a destination? Community-based tourism (CBT) allows visitors to establish a positive experience by playing an active role before, during, and after visiting a destination. The aim of this study is to create a comprehensive research framework to examine the overall experience of tourists when they act as co-creators. The survey design was used to collect 239 valid samples after tourists participated in a CBT activity situated in a traditional fishing village. Based on statistical results from partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), this study demonstrates that: (1) There was a more positive impact on co-creation of the CBT experience for tourists with a recreational motivation than those with a learning motivation. (2) Co-creation of the CBT experience had positive impacts on both satisfaction with the CBT experience itself and satisfaction with the impact of the CBT experience on their lives overall. (3) Satisfaction with the impact of CBT on life overall had a higher positive influence on revisit intention than did satisfaction with just the CBT experience. Furthermore, the results of analysis in this study are helpful to community associations or destination marketing organizations to create attractive experience activities.

Keywords:

• community-based tourism
• consumer motivation
• co-creation of CBT experience
• consumer satisfaction
• revisit intention

1. Introduction

Tourism combines various elements to create compelling experiences that impresses visitors and leave an unforgettable lifetime memory. Marketing scholars have pointed out that the key to how tourism industries could create successful tourism experiences lies in hospitality and tourism service providers engaging tourists in the value creation process through co-creating personalized experiences (e.g., Campos et al., 2018; Mohammadi et al., 2020; Wu & Cheng, 2019). Hence, service providers design travel services through interaction and assistance in a tourism context (Rihova et al., 2015). At the same time, as consumers participate and engage in a tourism experience, they spend many personal resources, such as time, effort, money, and knowledge, becoming, in a way, part-producers in the co-creation process. Consequently, it becomes easier for consumers to derive a positive experience in this type of encounter (Prebensen, Woo, Chen, & Uysal, 2013). Most importantly, suppliers and tourists create a method of co-creation to convey unique value, resulting in different customer interactions and added value that triggers different feelings (Cova et al., 2011; Verleye et al., 2015).

Research on the co-creation of experience is still unfolding. In addition to describing the nature, definition, conceptualization, and presentation of examples of co-creation applications, common research topics are structure introduction, driving factors, and key determinants for performing co-creation (Meng & Cui, 2020; Yu et al., 2020). At the same time, in recent years, numerous scholars have applied various research methods to analyze various topics of the co-creation of experience, such as qualitative interview (Troccoli & Felizardo, 2020) literature review (Campos et al., 2018), systematic mapping (Mohammadi et al., 2020), antecedent analysis (e.g., knowledge and motivation; Im & Qu, 2017; Xie et al., 2019), co-creation dimensions (e.g., co-creation matrix and interaction parties), and outcome variables (e.g., value, satisfaction and trust; Chathoth et al., 2016; Wu & Cheng, 2019).

However, experience is a continuous process. As consumers participate, they initially spend personal resources, such as time and money, as they enjoy various activities during the tour. This results in people having personal emotions (e.g., satisfaction) and later cognitive social behavior (e.g., a recommendation; Antón et al., 2018; Campos et al., 2018; Joyner et al., 2018; Neuhofer et al., 2012). The present author, through personal observations made during the research process, has also found that before consumers participate in community-based tourism (CBT), most of them desire to become acquainted with the local community’s culture, and then form personal experiences afterward through interaction with residents and professional guides during the process. Therefore, researchers utilize the concepts of pre-, middle, and post-tourism experience to investigate the perceptions of consumers participating in tourism itineraries. Although past studies revealed that co-creation antecedents (C-C antecedent) and co-creation processes (C-C process) constituted 28% of studies, only 4% of these were aimed at co-creation antecedent, processes, and outputs (Mohammadi et al., 2020). This shows the importance of forming a research framework that incorporates the time periods occurring before, during and after a trip.

Another reason why CBT deserves further exploration lies in the limited resources of rural communities and insufficient levels of market appeal (Huang et al., 2016). This is especially true for destinations with resources that are particular to some rural communities, as they are meaningful only to local residents and are not sufficiently attractive to consumers from other regions (McKercher & du Cros, 2002). In addition, CBT entails ecological and traditional cultural issues (Kastenholz et al., 2018). Therefore, based on the co-creation of CBT experiences, a deeper understanding of how and why consumers participate in the co-creation process allows for the identification of consumers’ perceptions and feelings during the process. This helps communities understand how to develop creative attractions for their destinations in order to meet consumers’ needs.

Meng and Cui (2020) have indicated that the co-creation experience provides researchers an understanding of the construct of tourist intention, and argue that it is important to create a comprehensive framework within tourists’ intention in different tourism contexts. This study establishes and demonstrates a research framework regarding motivation, co-creation of experience, satisfaction, and behavior intention, to make an important academic contribution. To achieve this, the present authors argue that the time periods before, during and after a trip must be observed and accounted for. Before the visit, consumers travel to a destination to participate in either entertainment-focused or learning-based activities (Edensor, 2000), indicating that consumers’ motivation for travel is multi-faceted. Therefore, this study focuses on recreation and learning motivation. During the visit, social interaction is the source of the experience (Minkiewicz et al., 2014; Yi & Gong, 2013), and visitors co-create experiences through interaction with both employees and other visitors. The interaction between consumers and community residents, the ecological environment, and the culture and history of a destination are likely to produce a sense of togetherness during a CBT experience (Campos et al., 2018), which highlights the importance of interaction between consumers and tour guides (Verleye et al., 2015). This study thus incorporates the interaction between consumers and professional service providers in the community. After the visit, consumers recall the tourism experience, which provides individuals an opportunity to reflect on and identify their desires, as well as the degree to which those desires were satisfied (Mehmetoglu & Engen, 2011). This study utilized experiential satisfaction (divided into the impacts of eco-tourism on overall satisfaction with life and experiential satisfaction with the experience itself) and revisit intention as the after response of consumers.

The structure of this paper proceeds as follows: The literature review section discusses CBT, tourist motivation, co-creation of experience, and tourist response. As for the methodology, this study introduces the sampling process, which includes community background, data collection and measurement development. In the section detailing statistical results, partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the hypotheses. The final section concludes with this work’s findings and provides its unique contribution.

2. Literature review

To account for the periods before, during and after a trip, this study provides the proposed model as shown in Figure 1. In the CBT context of this study, the trip begins with tourists’ multiple motivations, including recreational and learning motivation. These motivations influence subsequent co-creation experiences and tourists’ responses. The following section thus outlines the concepts of CBT, service-dominant logic (SDL), co-creation of experience, the antecedents of co-creation experiences (e.g., tourist motivation), outcomes (e.g., tourist satisfaction and revisit intention) and the proposed hypotheses.

Figure 1. Research framework.

2.1. Community-based tourism

CBT refers to community management and/or ownership of tourism in which a wide range of community benefits, including benefits to a wider group, are obtained (Curcija et al., 2019). In the past 20 years, the importance of CBT in sustainable tourism development has increased, encouraging communities to utilize valuable natural resources sustainably while also increasing added value and economies of scale (Salazar, 2012). The formation of CBT requires multiple stakeholders to participate and establish partnerships, sharing creativity, materials and knowledge. It also requires local communities to obtain and collect scattered resources and assets (Capriello et al., 2019). It allows consumers to interact with local communities in a peaceful and natural environment, learn about traditional lifestyles, and makes the interaction between consumers and the community more dynamic and interesting (Kastenholz et al., 2018). CBT emphasizes interpersonal interaction and guides visitors to understand the culture and history of their communities in the process of interaction. Therefore, it is worthwhile for researchers to use community-based tourism as the basis to explore the overall response of consumers in a continuous process.

2.2. Service-dominant logic and co-creation of experience

Co-creation allows consumers to engage in activities, explore the outside environment, and interact with other actors (Eraqi, 2011). Co-creation forms a memorable experience resulting in a personal, subjective feeling that someone will remember in the future (Zimmerman & Kelley, 2010). It positively influences tourists’ revisit intention (Coudounaris and Sthapit, 2017; Zhang et al., 2018). Therefore, behavior intention has been discussed from the perspective of generating co-creation experiences (Chathoth et al., 2016). For example, Im and Qu (2017) argue that the antecedents of co-creation are consumers’ knowledge, motivation and self-efficacy, and that the outcomes include value, satisfaction, trust, loyalty and repurchase behavior. Terblanche (2014) noted that the theoretical underpinnings of co-creation include service science, service logic, a social systems approach, as well as cultural and economic perspectives. Co-creation was first introduced by Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004). They argue that value is created by the interaction between the company and consumers through co-creation. Co-creation is collaborative product development by the customer and the firm (Hoyer et al., 2010).

Co-creation of experience originated from service-dominant logic (SDL) advocated by Vargo and Lusch (2008). Moreover, Lin et al. (2019) indicated that SDL is the theoretical underpinning of value co-creation and provides the basic principal for service value co-creation. SDL emphasizes that service itself, instead of product, is at the center of the economic exchange. Mathis et al. (2016) noted that the customer is the creator of value, and interacting with the organization to create value together is the core concept of co-creating an experience. Traditionally, co-creation experience has been the key to helping hospitality industries in creating visitor experience (Fu and Lehto, 2018; Shaw et al., 2011).

Customers are value co-creators through different partners, such as managers, employees, and other beneficiaries of the company (Payne et al., 2008; Ramaswamy & Gouillart, 2010). They share knowledge and resources with each other as well as increase value to jointly produce more beneficial services (Sthapit & Björk, 2019). The service management literature describes how co-creation has innovation as one of its purposes, where customers are highly cooperative and involved in customizing products or services (Chathoth et al., 2016). This phenomenon has gradually formed a theoretical view of co-creation value (Mustak et al., 2013) that views customers as being involved in cooperating, discussing, and trying to improve a product/service along with its providers, which stems ultimately from their motivation to be satisfied. The concept of co-creation has become a topical issue in tourism marketing research (Lei et al., 2019; Wu & Cheng, 2019) because the nature of interaction provides the basis of the consumer experience (Walls & Wang, 2001). In addition, the experiential elements involve consumers emotionally, physically, spiritually, and intellectually (Prebensen, Chen, & Uysal, 2014). For instance, the process of integrating values related to the co-creation of an experience involves consumers, service providers and settings (Mathis et al., 2016). Rihova et al. (2015) argue that the tourism experience is collective and shared, while value is constructed through social interaction. In tourism research, scholars have defined co-creation as the role of an actor in experience creation (Campos et al., 2018), and the consumer experience itself can be considered as the context of interactions and resource integration between the individual and the formed personal perception (Bjork & Sfandla, 2009). Therefore, a co-created tourism experience is the sum of the psychological events. During an itinerary, consumers participate in activities through physical and psychological interaction with other subjects in the experiential environment (Campos et al., 2018). In other words, the co-creation of an experience is a situation in which visitors and service providers are simultaneously involved and working together to create better service offerings as well as unique personal experiences for tourists.

2.3. Tourist motivation

Motivation is the internal driving force for the decision-making process, and it influences the direction and intensity of behavior (Bettman, 1979). Ryan and Deci (2000) indicated that motivation includes intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. With intrinsic motivation, people participate in the activities for the benefits inherent to the activities, such as joy and pride. Extrinsic motivation refers to the external rewards, such as financial gain and reputation (Zhang et al., 2017). In the context of CBT, motivation influences the decision to participate in activities (Jaafar et al., 2020) and is also a significant predictor for residents who participate in community activities (Latip et al., 2018). As such, it can be used to explain an individual’s behavior. There are various motivations for tourists to participate in CBT, such as relaxation, learning, socializing, etc. (Prebensen et al., 2014). This study focuses on learning and recreational motivation. For example, learning motivates individuals to engage in activities to obtain knowledge or skill (Chiang et al., 2017), which then shifts into specific tourism behavior. In addition, Kim and Park (2017) demonstrate that recreational needs of potential tourists increase their intention to participate in CBT activities.

2.4. Tourists satisfaction

Williams and Soutar (2009) argued that satisfaction is one of the most important concepts of tourism and that understanding consumers’ satisfaction is a requirement for successful destination marketing (Kim & Park, 2017; Williams & Soutar, 2009). Meanwhile, tourist satisfaction is a predictor to impact revisit intention and future choice. Satisfaction represents whether a customer’s evaluation of a service/product meets their expectations (Suhartanto et al., 2020). Satisfaction can be regarded as the result of service quality, destination image, motivation, and perceived value of vacation experience (Prebensen et al., 2013). Kruger (2012) argues that people’s satisfaction with life overall is affected by satisfaction in specific areas of life, such as family life, social life, entertainment life, health life and work life. For instance, senior consumers’ satisfaction with a holiday experience affects satisfaction with entertainment life and overall life quality after their travel (Kim et al., 2015). Sirgy et al. (2011) concur that satisfaction with life overall is not only affected by monetary issues, but also by the environment, mental health, education, entertainment time, and social happiness. It can be seen that effective interaction and cooperation between consumers and tourism service providers will result in a positive co-created experience that will spill over to consumers’ satisfaction with the holiday experience and life overall. Therefore, based on the multiple aspects of satisfaction, this study further divides satisfaction into tourism experience and satisfaction with life overall, inferring that co-creation of experience has an impact on the two types of satisfaction.

2.5. Hypotheses development

Consumers being willing to spend their personal resources to get a tourism experience involves consumers participating in certain entertainment-focused or learning-based activities (Edensor, 2000), which means that entertainment and learning are motivators. Meng et al. (2008) explain consumer motivation as a mixture of consumer needs and wants. It is a complex construct that affects the attitudes, beliefs and emotions of customers (White, 2015). Falk and Dierking (2000) argue that the experience of museum visitors emanates from motivation and previous experience. It can be seen that motivation is a pre-factor that affects co-creation (Im & Qu, 2017; Xie et al., 2019) and positively forms consumers’ hedonistic experience (Verleye et al., 2015). More specifically, while Park and Yoon (2009) distinguish rural destination consumers from those that are oriented toward activities and relaxation, other studies (e.g., Devesa et al., 2010) have focused on consumer activity in terms of interests, such as national parks, cultural projects, etc. Thus, scholars believe that consumers visit rural destinations because of a wide range of interests.

Huang et al. (2016) focused on heritage tourism to investigate the motivation and preferences of consumers. The researchers hypothesize that the co-creation of experience relies on both customer characteristics, such as expected co-creation benefits, and the co-creation environment. Therefore, the expected co-creation benefits incite people to put more effort into the activity, and the motivation anticipated by consumers includes returns such as pleasurable experiences. They confirmed that motivation to learn significantly and positively affected consumers’ interest in original historic sites, and that the motivation to learn and be entertained had a significant, positive correlation with different tourism activities; for example, eating local food and attending festivals. In addition, when consumers had higher entertainment motivation for heritage sites, they were more interested in activities than learning. Hypothesis one can be inferred as follows:

H1: (a) Recreational motivation and (b) learning motivation have a positive influence on consumers’ co-creation of experience.

Shaw et al. (2011) advocate that researchers should investigate the relationship between consumers’ co-creation of experience and vacation experience satisfaction. Campos et al. (2018) believe that interacting with other people and undertaking activities will increase their strength of emotion in a new environment. Similarly, Mehmetoglu and Engen (2011) concluded that recalling a tourism experience provides individuals with an opportunity to build their recognition of satisfaction, reflecting on the satisfaction of their desires and dreams.

A study by Kim et al. (2015) revealed that tourism is a tool to improve life satisfaction, and that a tourism experience can positively affect satisfaction with life overall. Mathis et al. (2016) also confirmed that consumers’ co-creation of an experience positively affects satisfaction with life overall. Therefore, the present author infers that co-creation of experiences is formed via personal emotional responses through interpersonal interaction, which actually implies personal emotional satisfaction. In other words, co-creation of experience by interaction between consumers and professional guides in the community will enhance traveling satisfaction and satisfaction with life overall after the trip. The following hypotheses were thus generated:

H2: Consumers’ co-creation of an experience positively influences their satisfaction with a CBT experience.

H3: Consumers’ co-creation of a CBT experience positively influences its impact on their satisfaction with life overall.

Satisfaction is a necessary predictor of loyalty (Yoon & Uysal, 2005), such as behavioral and attitudinal loyalty (Ali et al., 2016). Satisfied consumers will recommend or repurchase, which will affect revisit intention (Williams & Soutar, 2009). Grissemann and Stokburger-Sauer (2012) concluded that when consumers have the opportunity to co-create travel itineraries, they are more likely to repurchase from the same company or recommend it to others. Antón et al. (2018) revealed that after a trip, consumers are willing to share their experiences on social networks or other online communities. Researchers (e.g., Ali et al., 2016) have argued that consumers’ experience of scenic spots has a positive relationship with their satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Therefore, this study proposes hypothesis 4.

H4: (a) Consumers’ satisfaction with a CBT experience and (b) Consumer s’ satisfaction with the impact of a CBT on life overall positively influence revisit intention.

3. Methodology

3.1. Contextual background of community

Along the west coast of Taiwan lies Cieding District of Kaohsiung city. It has a length of 5.8 km from north to south, with a total area of about 15.76 km². It contains the Cieding and Baishalun wetlands, which are mainly fisheries that specialize in fish such as mullet and related processed products such as mullet roe. However, because the local river and estuary of the Erren River were polluted by the mixed metal scrap and smelting industries in the 1980s, the so-called “green oyster incident” occurred, and the cultivation of oysters has been banned ever since. It was not until 2013 that the local government and environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) worked together to reconstruct the Erren River. These days, the Cieding Sampan and Raft Association (https://www.facebook.com/CiedingSamfar) has established and promoted community ecological tourism, combining local history with traditional culture of the associated fishing villages. This is primarily to provide visitors the opportunity to understand the importance of environmental protection and community ecology. CBT in Cieding District aims to introduce the local cultural environment, environmental restoration, as well as traditional fishing village culture, fish harvesting, and other experiential activities. Consumers are required to make reservations for these experiential activities. Tours and activities can be divided into three categories (ecological experiential activities of the fishing village, community travel and Do-it-yourself experience, and boat village cultural experience) according to the time and religious culture of the fishing village.

3.2. Measurement development

30 tourists who had participated in the CBT activities during the previous three months were asked to do the survey. Based on their comments, this study revised the items and further developed the survey. There were six parts in the questionnaire. The motivation scale was designed to account for the inner psychological processes of CBT. Motivation is defined herein as an individual’s internal psychological process which is guided, stimulated and maintained by a goal. Each scale had either four or six scales which were based on past study Huang et al. (2016). The original Cronbach’s alpha scores fell within 0.91 and 0.80. Co-creation of experience represents the degree of mutual interaction and individual participation with guides during the tour. The measurement was based on Mathis et al. (2016), with a total of five questions. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.72. Adopted from from Sirgy (2012) and Suhartanto et al. (2020), satisfaction with CBT represents the degree to which an individual feels good about or was pleased with the CBT experience. There were three questions in total, with a Cronbach’s alpha score of 0.82. The measurement related to satisfaction with the impact of the CBT experience on life overall after participating in CBT was adopted from Neal et al. (2004). It had a total of three questions, and the original Cronbach’s alpha score was 0.82. Revisit intention represents the degree to which an individual is willing to participate in and recommend the tours to others. The measurement was based on Yoon and Uysal (2005) with a total of four questions. The original Cronbach’s alpha score was 0.85. Consumers’ demographic variables were recorded, including gender, age, educational background, occupation and personal income.

3.3. Data collection

The data were collected from October 5 to 29 December 2019. The survey utilized nonprobability convenience sampling. This sampling approach is appropriate for collecting information on tourists’ behaviors when the entire population is too large (Meng & Cui, 2020). For sample representativeness, the sample must consist of those who had participated in the activities and were thus subsequently able to answer the survey (Kim & Park, 2017). Cieding District was chosen as the survey site because Cieding Sampan and Raft Association in Kaohsiung provides local community guides, ecological conservation, and experiential itineraries. With cultural characteristics of local traditional fishing villages, it not only conforms to the definition of CBT, but is also well-known for its experiential activities of marine ecological conservation, with more than 10,000 visitors every year. The questionnaire was distributed to consumers who participated in the experiential activities that were held by Cieding Sampan and Raft Association. Researchers contacted the association staff beforehand, and the questionnaire was distributed in the fishery classroom when visitors finished the trip. After receiving notification from the association, six research assistants who have been trained to collect questionnaires on weekdays (three times) and holidays (six times) from October to December were dispatched to collect the data. Each session contained about 30–40 participants. The samples collected were consistent with active participation behavior, such as asking questions and enjoyment of the interaction with the tour guides, which demonstrates a co-created tourism experience. A total of 320 questionnaires were distributed, and 239 valid questionnaires were collected. The biographical data indicates that female respondents were slightly more numerous (52.9%), and age groups were comprised of a range individuals ranging in age: 30–39 years (33.7%), 50–59 years (19.9%) and under 29 (17.3%). Moreover, 58% of the participants earned a monthly income around US$1,500–2,200. In addition, a slim majority of the participants had acquired a university degree (50.5%), and their occupations were distributed among service industry (60.7%), independent business (15.6%), and manufacturing industry (13.9%).

4. Results

Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) does not require the assumption of multi-variate normal distribution and is flexible for variable measurement scales (Hair et al., 2021). It is suitable to utilize small sizes to evaluate measurement and structural models (Ali et al., 2018). Thus, PLS-SEM was adopted to test the research hypotheses. In the first step, Mardia’s coefficients were used to test multivariate normality. The statistical results indicated that the data followed a multivariate normal distribution, though there were a few exceptions. PLS-SEM was therefore deemed an appropriate tool to test the study’s hypotheses.

4.1. Measurement model assessment

Henseler et al. (2015) noted that Cronbach α (CA), composite reliability (CR) and rho_A are useful to test internal consistency. As Table 1 shows, the results of CA (0.952–0.971), CR (0.965–0.981) and rho_A (0.858–0.946) of each dimension are higher than the recommended threshold (CA>0.95; CR>0.96; rho_A > 0.95). Meanwhile, the average variance extracted (AVE) (0.858–0.946) exceeds the cut-off point of 0.5 (>0.85). Thus, the model fits the standard of intrinsic reliability and convergent validity.

Table 1. Validity and reliability

Construct	Factor loading	Cronbach’s α	Rho_A	CR	AVE
Recreational motivation		0.964	0.966	0.974	0.904
RM1. I want to relax.	0.942
RM2. Participating in the tourism is entertaining.	0.964
RM3. Participating in the allows me to enjoy the pleasures of retrospection.	0.963
RM4.It is a popular destination.	0.934
Learning motivation		0.966	0.968	0.973	0.858
LM1. I want to know the pollution history and rebirth of Erren River.	0.940
LM2. I want to know the history of Kaohsiung.	0.935
LM3. I want to know the history of Taiwan.	0.948
LM4. This ecological journey has contributed to my marine knowledge	0.951
LM5. I want to know more about the ecological environment of the Cieding fishing village.	0.929
LM6. I feel a sense of belonging to Cieding community.	0.852
Co-creation of CBT experience		0.960	0.960	0.971	0.892
CC1. I feel comfortable working with a travel professional during this activity.	0.949
CC2. The setting of ecological environment allows me to effectively collaborate with the travel professional.	0.956
CC3.My eco-tourism experience is enhanced because of my participation in the activity.	0.942
CC4. I feel confident to collaborate with the travel professional.	0.931
Satisfaction with impact of CBT on life overall		0.970	0.971	0.980	0.946
SICBT1. All in all, this trip was unforgettable and enriched my life quality	0.968
SICBT2. I think my overall satisfaction with life has rapidly increased after this trip.	0.973
SICBT3. Overall, I feel very pleasant after participating in this eco-tourism.	0.973
Satisfaction with CBT experience		0.971	0.970	0.981	0.944
SCBT1. All in all, I am satisfied with this ecological journey which has enriched my life.	0.968
SCBT2. I am enriched in certain way by participating in this journey.	0.977
SCBT3. The reflections I’ve gotten from this trip and make me feel better.	0.973
Revisit intention		0.952	0.954	0.965	0.875
RI1. I will be come back here to participate in the tourism activities in the future	0.932
RI2. This tourism activity is my first choice	0.908
RI3. I would recommend this tourism activity to friends/family.	0.948
RI4. I will tell others about my pleasant feelings in this tourism itinerary.	0.952

A discriminant validity test all of the square roots of the AVE (values in bold, off-diagonal) are greater than the correlations in the respective columns and rows. Therefore, the measurement model demonstrates the criterion of adequate discriminant validity (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). In addition, the heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations method (HTMT) was used to assess discriminant validity (Henseler et al., 2015). As Table 2 depicts, all values of HTMT are lower than the threshold of 0.90, fulfilling the condition that HTMT = .90 (Suhartanto et al., 2020) and reinforcing the satisfactory discriminant validity for all constructs in this study. For the model fit assessment, a standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) value less than 0.08 is considered a good fit (Hair et al., 2010). For this study, the SRMR value for both the saturated and estimated model was 0.029/0.053, indicating that the proposed model is a good fit for the data.

Table 2. Discriminant validity

	Recreational motivation	Learning motivation	co-creation of CBT experience	Satisfaction with impact of CBT on life overall	Satisfaction with CBT experience	Revisit intention
Recreation motivation	0.951
Learning motivation	0.896	0.926
co-creation of CBT experience	0.883	0.900	0.944
Satisfaction with impact of CBT on life overall	0.891	0.879	0.921	0.971
Satisfaction with CBT experience	0.883	0.862	0.922	0.917	0.973
Revisit intention	0.911	0.885	0.894	0.917	0.911	0.935

Table 4. Mediation effect analysis

Paths	X1 → Z	Z →Y	X1 →Y	VAF
learning motivation → co-creation of CBT experience → satisfaction with impact of CBT on life overall	0.55	0.921	0.506	50.02%
Recreational motivation → co-creation of CBT experience → satisfaction with impact of CBT on life overall	0.39	0.921	0.359	50.01%
learning motivation → co-creation of CBT experience → satisfaction with CBT experience	0.55	0.922	0.507	50.00%
recreational motivation → co-creation of CBT experience → satisfaction with CBT experience	0.39	0.922	0.36	49.97%
Co-creation of CBT experience → satisfaction with impact of CBT on life overall → revisit intention	0.921	0.512	0.471	50.03%
Co-creation of CBT experience →satisfaction with CBT experience → revisit intention	0.922	0.442	0.407	50.03%

4.2. Structural model assessment

After the acceptability of the measurement model, the study tested the structural model. In the first step, variance inflation factor (VIF) values were calculated and they all fell under the threshold value of 10 except for questionnaire item CC5 (“I like to cooperate with the guide and this makes me experience good social interaction”). Based on Hair et al. (2010), the item should be considered for deletion when the VIF > 5 or 10, and thus, CC5 was deleted. After that, structural model analysis was rerun to confirm the fitness of the research framework. In addition, bootstrapping procedure with 5000 subsamples was calculated to create R-squared, path estimates, and related corresponding t-values. As Table 3 and Figure 1 show, Recreational Motivation (β = 0.390, p < .001) and Learning Motivation (β = 0.550, p < .001) positively impacted Co-creation of the CBT Experience; therefore, H1a and H1b are supported. Co-creation of CBT Experiences positively influenced Satisfaction with CBT (β = 0.922, p < .001) and Satisfaction with the Impact of the CBT on Life Overall (β = 0.921, p < .001). In addition, Satisfaction with CBT (β = 0.442, p < .001) and Satisfaction with the Impact of the CBT on Life Overall (β = 0.512, p < .001) positively impacted Revisit Intention, and thus H4a, and H4b were supported.

Table 3. Hypotheses testing

Paths	β	t value (p values)	Decision
Recreational motivation → co-creation of CBT experience	0.390	4.675(p = .000)	Supported
Learning motivation →co-creation of CBT experience	0.550	6.632(p = .000)	Supported
Co-creation of CBT experience → satisfaction with impact of CBT on life overall	0.921	52.743(p = .000)	Supported
Co-creation of CBT experience → Satisfaction with CBT experience	0.922	62.888(p = .000)	Supported
Satisfaction with CBT experience → Revisit intention	0.442	5.327(p = .000)	Supported
Satisfaction with impact of CBT on life overall → Revisit intention	0.512	6.295(p = .000)	Supported

There is an indirect relationship via the Z1 (mediator) affecting the direct relationship from X1 (independent variable) to Y (dependent variable). The variance accounted for (VAF) value in the context of PLS-SEM was used to test mediation effects. Hair et al. (2013) indicate that the mediation effect is not available if VAF < 20%, while a partial mediation effect is available if 20% <VAF<80%, and a full mediation effect is available when VAF>80%. Therefore, the results of VAF analysis are between 49.97%~50.03%, and thus the partial mediation effect is available. The findings indicate that Recreational Motivation and Learning Motivation do indeed influence Satisfaction through Co-creation of CBT Experience (e.g., Im & Qu, 2017; Xie et al., 2019). Meanwhile, Satisfaction with Impact of CBT on Life Overall and Satisfaction with CBT as the mediators between Co-creation of CBT Experience and Revisit Intention (e.g., Kim et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2018) were examined. As noted by Walls and Wang (2001), the nature of interaction provides the basis of the consumer experience, which means that a co-created tourism experience is the sum of the psychological events (Campos et al., 2018) after which the consumers establish their own emotional response and intention. This study thus proposes that a co-creation of experience perspective can be used to create a comprehensive framework that accounts for periods of time occurring before, during and after a trip.

5. Conclusion and discussion

Successful tourism must allow consumers to obtain a personalized experience through co-creation (Hung et al., 2016; Lei et al., 2019; Mohammadi et al., 2020; Prebensen, Chen, & Uysal, 2014; Wu & Cheng, 2019). This provides stakeholders in the tourism industry to obtain value through social interaction (Rihova et al., 2015). In this study, SDL provided the theoretical underpinning to create a comprehensive framework. Meanwhile, the purposes of this study were to investigate consumers’ motivation for recreation and learning, co-creation of CBT experiences, the impact of eco-tourism on satisfaction with life overall and the relationship between eco-tourism experience satisfaction and revisit intention via the process of CBT activities taking place at all stages of the experience; that is, before, during and after the trip.

The empirical results of this study demonstrate that (1) compared with a recreational motivation, the learning motivation has a more positive influence on the co-created CBT experience. This finding suggests that the motivational dimensions were diverse, and that the nature of CBT in a traditional fishing village conveys not only the hedonistic element of pleasure, but also provides meaningful knowledge to the visitors. In other words, the expectations of consumers in this CBT context were focused on ecology and environment, history, and traditional culture in the fishing village. However, the results of this study were different from those of Huang et al. (2016), as it was found that consumers with a higher recreational motivation were more interested in activities than were the learning-oriented consumers. Regarding the difference in this finding, the present authors believes that the present discussion should focus on the breadth and depth of the tourism activities. This study focused on co-creation of CBT experiences. In such experiences, consumers must participate and spend personal resources, such as time, to form them. This process emphasizes active participation and engagement as well as the concept of in-depth tourism. On the other hand, Huang et al. (2016) argue that it is important to increase interest in activities and emphasize the concept of broad involvement. Therefore, the findings of this study have several important implications for tourism destinations. Firstly, the CBT model focuses on the co-creation of experiences that contain not only entertainment activities, but also activities aimed at specific tourism topics (emphasizing depth), such as the ecological and environmental issues emphasized in this study. Secondly, co-creation of CBT has a positive impact on satisfaction with the CBT experience itself as well as satisfaction with life following the CBT experience. The results are consistent with Williams and Soutar’s (2009) conclusion that satisfaction is an important concept in tourism. It also indicates that CBT is an experiential process that affects the body, mind, and spirit of a consumer for an extended time. In addition, a tourism experience is a way to improve one’s life satisfaction (Kim et al., 2015; Mathis et al., 2016). Thirdly, consumer satisfaction has a positive effect on revisit intention (Yoon & Uysal, 2005), and the CBT satisfaction on life overall has a greater influence. Combining the second and third results, it was found that CBT satisfaction with life overall is a key factor when designing experiential activities. However, few studies have discussed this issue in the past. Therefore, when planning the design of experiential activities, tourism destinations should give more careful consideration of the potential long-term impacts on the lives of consumers.

5.1. Theoretical implications

Based on the results of this study, there are three academic contributions. First, as advocated by Vargo and Lusch (2008), SDL provides the basic principles for value co-creation. Co-creation is also collaborative product development by the customer and the firm (Hoyer et al., 2010). Therefore, this study helps to determine how and why consumers participate in the co-creation process, accounting for consumers’ perceptions and feelings during CBT in a holistic manner. As proposed by Mathis et al. (2016), CBT helps service providers to provide a platform to create unique experiences for consumers. This study echoes Mohammadi et al.’s (2020) assertion that it is more productive to discuss both the pre-factors and processes of co-creating a tourism experience. As a result, the pre-factors of co-creation, its processes and outputs are topics that future researchers could investigate in more depth. More importantly, by obtaining data before, during, and after a trip, researchers can solve the problem of fragmented research on consumer experience that has been conducted in the past. For example, past studies, such as Suhartanto et al. (2020), explored mostly the impacts of co-creation satisfaction on the current experience or revisit intentions, such as loyalty. However, the empirical findings in this study show that the satisfaction with the impact of CBT on life overall has a greater impact on revisit intention than that of current CBT experience satisfaction. This phenomenon also means that CBT needs to satisfy consumers not only during the trip, but also after the trip, which points to a need for the prioritization of activities design that can affect the lives of consumers in the long-term. This point underscores Kruger’s (2012) assertion that consumers should be evaluated as a whole and important part of the experience. Second, CBT should emphasize the cultural customs, living environment and history of the community. It can be seen that learning motivation has a greater impact on co-creation of the CBT experience than does entertainment motivation. This suggests that consumers pursue not only perceptual (emotional) needs, but also engage in intellectual (knowledge) needs. Therefore, the comparison between different types of motivations reveals the value of this research and helps CBT designers to better understand the actual psychological needs of consumers when resources are limited. Third, due to the lack of community resources or the low attractiveness of various elements related to particular scenic spots (Huang et al., 2016), this study found that CBT is capable of forming activities that are both valuable for tourists and feasible for the community through the connection of different elements. The results are consistent with Mathis et al.’s (2016) conclusion that the integration of small attractive resources into a theme, such as a farm tour, will eventually form specific interest in tourism. Furthermore, this study provides a theoretical basis that takes a comprehensive account of the time periods before, during, and after trip, allowing researchers to understand how to better assist in the design or evaluation of CBT activities.

5.2. Practical implications

There are three practical implications of this study: (1) This study focuses on co-creation of experience, involving the interaction between consumers and professional service providers. In the process of experience, interaction is the first priority in co-creation, and employees need to develop new skills to upgrade themselves from mere service providers to experience providers (Bharwani & Jauhari, 2013). It can be seen that the training mechanism of the experience provider has become very important. Due to the scarcity of resources in the community and the lack of professional tour guides and planning capabilities (McKercher & du Cros, 2002), the present author suggests that CBT development units (such as community associations or tourism organizations) should actively cooperate with the public sector; for instance, cooperation with local governments and/or universities. Through professional university instructors, the abilities of local residents and consumer organizations to guide, explain, and plan activities could be enhanced. This might include instructors providing training in such skills as guided tours, ecological surveys, planning of community cultural attractions, and event design, as well as local government officials assisting in such services as professional interpretation and arranging the logistics of successful CBT visits. (2) By combining the distinctive local characteristics of a destination, such as its nearby attractions, cultural relics and historical relevance, tourism destinations can be inspired to think about how to design a more distinct and meaningful CBT experience. (3) The present study also suggests that tourism associations encourage consumers to learn about local culture to form new knowledge, so as to come away with a deeper understanding and appreciation of a destination’s culture and history. Toward this end, it is recommended that interactive products, such as map cards combined with local ecology and hands-on activities, such as practical traditional fishing methods, be utilized. Antón et al. (2018) also maintained that consumer destinations or practitioners convey knowledge through different activities, such as guided tours, lectures, workshops, and film screening. In addition, storytelling can be added to allow tour guides to provide a storyline incorporating local elements, complete with setting, characters, and plot structure. This approach can also simplify the difficulty of operating a community destination.

5.3. Research limitation and suggestions for future research

This study focused on co-creation of experience in a CBT context and explored the processes of experience with a focus on consumers as co-creators. Therefore, it is suggested that future research add comparisons between different co-creation experience dimensions (Mohammadi et al., 2020), motivation and emotion (Joyner et al., 2018), and the impacts of stakeholders on consumer behavior (Bharwani & Jauhari, 2013; Salvatore et al., 2018). In addition, it is suggested that future studies focus on consumers engaging in different types of CBT activities within a single community. For example, this study focused on normal activities of community associations. In addition, experimental methods could be added to future studies (Rihova et al., 2018) in order to evaluate which types of tourism activities consumers prefer. As for sampling design, this study conducted a questionnaire survey recommended by the local association. Future studies could conduct general surveys for each event in a specific period.

Highlight

We believe that how to account for a memorable experience when the experience encompasses periods that occur before, during, and after visiting a destination is important in tourism field. Based on a comprehensive research framework, this study demonstrates that the expectations of consumers in the Community-based tourism (CBT) context were focused on ecology and environment, history, and traditional culture in the fishing village, not only recreation activities. Meanwhile, co-creation of the CBT experience affects the body, mind, and soul of a consumer for an extended time and is a way to improve one’s life satisfaction. In addition, satisfaction with the impact of CBT on life overall had a higher positive influence on revisit intention than did satisfaction with just the CBT experience. Therefore, when planning the design of experiential activities, tourism destinations should give more careful consideration of the potential long-term impacts on the lives of consumers.

Acknowledgements

The author also acknowledges the editing service of Seth Thomas Pankhurst.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan [MOST 109-2410-H-328-002 -].

Notes on contributors

Austin Rong-Da Liang

Austin Rong-Da Liang is the Professor in the Department of Leisure and Recreation Management at the National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism (Taiwan) and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the College of Hospitality and Technology Leadership, University of South Florida – Sarasota Manatee (USA). His main research interests focus on farm tourism, organic food consumption behavior, hospitality marketing, electronic commerce and marketing research. He has published in Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism and Research, British Food Journal, Computer in Human Behavior, Current Issues in Tourism, Electronic Commerce Research and Application, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Internet Research, Service Industrial Journal, Tourism Management, and Tourism Management Perspectives.