关键词: 目的地, 浪漫属性, 游客感知, 量表开发, 量表验证, 景观感知理论

Abstract: The market of travel for affection (e.g., honeymoon travel, couples’ travel, and female travel) has shown a rapidly-growing trend in recent years. Consequently, destinations that possess and represent romance and can thus create romantic tourist experiences are increasingly favored. Therefore, the importance of tourists’ perceived destination romantic attributes (PDRAs) continues to be highlighted by tourists and tourism practitioners. Especially, for those tourists who pursue romantic experiences, PDRAs are not only an important factor influencing their destination choice, but also important experience objects throughout the journey. However, extant literature still lacks in-depth investigations into PDRAs, in that researchers have only qualitatively analyzed the connotations of this important construct, which has made it difficult to quantitatively measure the romantic attributes of a destination as perceived by tourists. From the perspective of tourist perception and focusing on domestic Chinese tourists, this study aims to develop and validate a scale to measure PDRAs. Three romantic destinations (i.e., Sanya, Dali, and Lijiang) were chosen as sample collection sites, as they represent two types of typical romantic destinations (i.e., coastal destinations, historical and cultural town destinations). Specifically, strictly following scale development procedures as recommended in the literature, this study was performed as follows. First, a systematic review of existing studies on destination attributes in general, and destination romantic attributes in particular, was carried out. As a result, the concept of PDRAs was clearly defined. Second, a comprehensive review of the landscape perception theory was performed. Specifically, the birth and development of this theory, as well as its applications in traditional landscape research and emerging tourism research, were critically reviewed. On this basis, a theoretical framework consisting resource and environment, human-environment interaction, and inter-personal interaction, was developed to guide this research (i.e., scale development and validation). Third, through literature analysis, together with the context analysis results in previous research, the initial item pool of the proposed PDRAs scale (PDRAS) was established (number of items=47). Furthermore, after expert consultation and questionnaire pilot-test, the initial PDRAS was formed (number of items: 48). Fourth, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted using the formally collected sample dataset 1 (Dali, n=163), and the dimensional structure (i.e., mental escape, psychological compatibility, hospitality, romantic interaction, natural environment, and uniqueness) of the measurement scale was determined through iterative tests. Fifth, by performing confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using the formally collected sample dataset 2 (Sanya and Lijiang, n=399), the capability of the scale to fit the actual observation data was further tested to establish its validity and reliability, and the formal structure of the PDRAS was confirmed. Sixth, the positive relationships between PDRAs and other five constructs, namely memorable tourism experiences (MTEs), tourist emotional experience, tourist overall satisfaction, word-of-mouth intention, and revisit intentions, were all tested and supported, which have further verified the predictive validity of the PDRAS. Finally, the 18-item PDRAS with sufficient validity and reliability was established. This study has made meaningful contributions to the destination attribute literature by developing and validating a measurement scale to measure tourists’ PDRAs. Besides, this study offers practical implications for the development, management and marketing of romantic destinations.

Key words: tourist destination, romantic attributes, scale development, scale validation, tourist perception, landscape perception theory