Menglong Xia

Technological innovation is important for destination marketing organisations (DMOs) in achieving sustainable destination development. However, few studies have considered the marketing potential of emerging immersive technologies in promoting local destinations, as well as their impacts on tourists’ place attachment. Drawing upon cue consistency and place attachment theory, this study established a serial mediation model to examine the impact of sensory information acquired from online virtual tourism experiences, such as visual and auditory cues, on tourists’ place attachment formation during the post-trip stage. The PLS-SEM approach was adopted to analyse the data, which were collected from 408 respondents via an online survey. The results showed that tourists’ sensory information significantly influenced their virtual attachment and sense of presence. Furthermore, tourists’ perceived information and image consistency significantly influenced their place attachment. In addition, the serial mediation effect among sensory information, cue consistency, and place attachment was confirmed. The theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed.

This paper aimed to explore the potentiality of creative tea beverages as a new tourism attraction and the determinants of tourists’ repurchase intention towards creative tea beverages using the dual process theory. The structural–causal relationship among these constructs was examined using structural equation modeling with the data collected from 478 tourists with previous experience of consuming creative tea beverages. The results support the conclusion that the creativity and quantity of the information about tea beverages spread by electronic word-of-mouth significantly contributes to evoking consumers’ emotions, and the evoked emotions significantly influence consumers’ repurchase intention towards tea beverages. Furthermore, other-oriented face constructs also play a crucial role in determining consumers’ repurchase intention. Theoretical and marketing implications are also discussed in this paper.

This study aims to explore tourism sector small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) coopetition and its antecedents, and the consequences of sustainable competitive advantage in complex institutional contexts through the integration of institutional theory, social exchange theory and commitment theory. Through a field survey in the Greater Bay Area in Southern China, this study identified the structural links between tourism SMEs’ institutional environment, economic benefits and their commitment to a regional framework, on the one hand, and their coopetition and the effect on their sustainable competitive advantage, on the other, along with a comparative analysis based on the different social system regarding this structural model within this region.