A Study of Cultural Tourist Typology and Perceived Authenticity

• Main Authors: Shu-mei Kao, 高樹梅
• Other Authors: Cheng-ping Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/16597195500692411383

碩士 === 世新大學 === 觀光學研究所(含碩專班) === 100 === Providing tourists with authenticity experiences is one of the goals for cultural tourism development. Especially, authenticity is an important element for heritage tourism quality . Most cultural tourism researches which focus on demographic variables regard tourists as the typical visitors who have high cultural motives and pursue deep experiences – “deep tourists” but ignore the difference among tourist. Due to the fact that the perceived authenticity of a certain destinations usually derive from personal subjective value, it would be more appropriate if we adopt the tourist types which possess characteristics in common. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore if different types of cultural tourists have different perception on authenticity of destination. An on-site questionnaire survey was conducted in the well-known heritage, the monument distribution of Lukang Town, Changhua County . The questionnaire contained three parts: the demographic information, cultural tourist type, and perceived authenticity. Visitors whose household register was not in Lukang Town were sampled based on the convenience sample method. Totally 400 valid questionnaires were retrieved, and the main results are as follows: 1. The cultural tourists in Lukang Town were grouped into five types: the purposeful cultural tourist, the sightseeing tourist, the casual tourist, the incidental cultural tourist, and the serendipitous cultural tourist. Among the above, the serendipitous cultural tourists and the purposeful cultural tourists who sought deep experiences were the majority. 2. Tourist perceived authenticity contained four dimensions: “life and cultural”, “building”, “traditional product”, and “belief and folkway”. 3. The five types of cultural tourists had no significant differences at “life and cultural”. However, the five types of cultural tourists had similar patterns at the dimensions of “bulding” and “belief and folkway”; visitors reported the highest authenticity at “bulding”. The “traditional product” revealed exceptional reflection; tourists who were highly motivated to travel for cultural reasons and sought deep experiences reported lowest score at ”traditional product”. 4. The study indicated three possible reasons affecting tourists’ perceived authenticity: the importance of cultural tourism in the decision to visit a destination affected the cognitive standard of authenticity, the experiences sought while participate cultural tourism affected tourists’ understandings toward the destination, and the types of cultural resources perceived also affected tourists’ perceived authenticity . Owing to nearly 80% of the tourists of Lukang Town pursuing deep cultural experiences, the study suggests that tourism managers should strengthen interpretation programs and cultural activities to increase tourists’ experiences . In addition, it was proposed to facilitate specific spaces and hold activities for interpretation and cultural performance to enhance tourists’ perceived authenticity for those intangible cultural heritages.