The role of co-creation experience in forming tourists' revisit intention to home-based accommodation: Extending the theory of planned behavior

This study aims to provide a theoretical framework explaining how tourists' revisit intentions to home-based accommodations are formed. It does so by inserting constructs related to co-creation experience (experiencescape, perceived value, and memorability) into the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and by considering the moderating effect of co-creation behavior. The study results (n = 413) from structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that the extended TPB has better predictive power than the original TPB. The findings also showed that all proposed paths were significant, identified the role of co-creation experience in generating intention, and verified the mediating role of study variables. Furthermore, the invariance test indicated that tourists' co-creation behavior played a moderating role between experiencescape and customers' internal factors (perceived value, memorability, and attitude). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Bringing the past to life: Co-creating tourism experiences in historic house tourist attractions

This ethnographic study concentrates on the co-creation of experiential value between the tourist and tour guide in a single historic tourism site; Huntingdon Castle, Ireland. Built upon the principles of service dominant logic, the research explores how storytelling acts as an engagement platform and value enhancing strategic resource. In doing so, it impels the value co-creation journey and shapes the tourist's experience. Observation is coupled with qualitative interviews to capture the dual perspective of both guides and tourists. Findings exhibit the co-creation process through the performance of stories; how and when people derive pleasure (value); the influencing aspects of the environment or place; and guide/tourist perspectives on how they feel and think during the experience. The research contributes by taking a practical operational view of how co-creation occurs. It goes beyond the guide's perspective and exhibits the importance of co-creation of lived experience in the story enhanced tourism experience framework.     

Human value co-creation behavior in tourism: Insight from an Australian whale watching experience

This study explores and tests a comprehensive model of co-creation in creating value and tourist satisfaction. In addition to being the first study to empirically test the customer value co-creation behavior scale developed by Yi and Gong (2013), the present work adds to theory by revealing the importance of tourists' mental co-creation and employees' active participation in creating value and satisfaction for the customer. Factor analyses and econometric models of logit model and multivariable ordinary least squares regression are applied to a sample of 1024 whale watching tourists. The study finds that tourists' participation is more important in influencing their perceived value during the experience than their satisfaction. Employees' input is key to the experience in enhancing tourists' value and satisfaction. The main contribution of the study is the inclusion of co-creation behaviors from different human actors including tourists and employees. Opportunities for future research are outlined.     

The roles of perceived internal and external benefits and costs in innovation co-creation: lessons from Japan

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that motivate tourists to engage in collaborative efforts with tourist destinations for the co-creation of innovative tourism products. Targeting tourists who have visited Tokyo for tourism purpose, the study verifies the antecedents of tourists’ intention to co-create, which include perceived benefits (PB), perceived costs (PC), subjective norms, and ability to co-create tourism innovation. This study further reveals that PC do not have a significant impact on tourists’ intention to participate in innovation co-creation activities, while the other antecedents play important roles. Also, separating PB and costs into internal and external factors, perceived internal benefits (PIB) play a significant role in motivating tourists to participate in co-creation, while perceived external benefits do not. Practical implications are provided for destinations such as Japan to encourage tourists to share their valuable knowledge to improve tourism products and services of tourist destinations.     

Drivers and resources of customer co-creation: A scenario-based case in the restaurant industry

The aim of this study was to build and test a model that explores customer co-creation by integrating drivers and resources that promote customer co-creation. This study used a scenario-based survey that combines respondents’ personal experiences of dining at a full-service restaurant and their responses to the hypothetical scenario of the co-creation experience. The population of the study was restaurant customers in the United States who visited any full-service restaurant within the previous three months before the survey date. Using convenience sampling, respondents were recruited from the Amazon Mechanical Turk. A total of 501 responses were used for data analysis using a two-step approach of structural equation modeling. This study found that customers with a higher level of knowledge, self-efficacy, and motivation are more likely to participate in the co-creation experience. In addition, the results supported the role of the customer as a resource integrator during the co-creation experience.     

Nonverbal communication in hotels as a medium of experience co-creation

Although the Service-Dominant Logic literature hinted on the importance of nonverbal language for value co-creation, nonverbal communication as an experience co-creation component has not been explicitly addressed in either hospitality and tourism or general management context. Through the constructivist lens, this research focuses on kinesics, which is the most noticeable component of nonverbal communication, in hotels as a medium of experience co-creation in the guest-employee dyad. Four video-elicitation focus groups, with 12 hotel employees and 12 guests, found reciprocity (mutual recognition, insight exchange, expectation formation) and engagement (customized attention, relationship building, a sense of affinity) as two major dimensions of kinesic experience. Furthermore, employees' imperative and guests' complacent cues act as value triggers, contributing to experience co-creation between guests and employees. Based on empirical results and related literature, the framework of experience co-creation centred on kinesics is proposed; practical implications regarding frontline employees’ nonverbal communication competencies are discussed.     

Antecedents and the underlying mechanism of customer intention of co-creating a dining experience

Companies have begun to tap into the resources of their customers to co-create unique and personalized experiences. This study aimed to investigate the influences of openness to experience, known as a customer personality trait, and the perceived physical environment on customers’ intention to participate in a co-creation experience. Positive anticipated emotions were introduced to explain the underlying process of co-creation. The data were collected from full-service restaurant diners in the United States. The results indicated that customers who score high in openness to experience are more likely to participate in the co-creation experience whereas the perceived physical environment did not influence the intention directly. The mediating role of positive anticipated emotions was significant between the perceived physical environment and the intention and between openness to experience and the intention. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed in the study.     

旅游公共服务价值共创:概念模型、驱动因素与行为过程--以杭州市社会资源国际访问点为例

与商业服务领域相似,旅游公共服务近年来也经历了由产品主导逻辑向服务主导逻辑演变的过程,由公共服务供需双方共创价值的实践现象已经出现。文章以杭州市社会资源国际访问点为案例,通过扎根理论的方法,探索性地提出旅游公共服务价值共创的概念,剖析了由政府、企业、居民、游客等不同社会主体参与的旅游公共服务价值共创现象,识别了制度保障、增权激励、信息透明、技术摄入、文化契合是实现旅游公共服务价值共创的驱动因素与前提条件。而不同主体间耦合形成的服务生态系统,其内部各要素的互动与整合是旅游公共服务价值共创实现的中介要素。此外,旅游公共服务价值共创的行为过程包括价值主张提出、共创环境营造、社会成员嵌入、社会价值共识、公共价值创造和社会影响输出。文章拓展了价值共创理论在旅游公共服务领域的应用,揭示了共创的内部机理与行为规律,为旅游目的地公共服务发展与供给模式创新提供了理论工具。     

Situational and personal factors influencing hospitality employee engagement in value co-creation

This study explores the situational and personal factors affecting hospitality employees’ engagement in the co-creation of value. The concept of value co-creation emerged from the general co-creation literature, and little research has assessed how situational and personal factors enhance our understanding of value creation. To explore these underlying factors, a qualitative study involving in-depth and focus group interviews was conducted at three luxury hotels in Hong Kong and Macao. The research findings indicate five situational factors and five personal factors impact cocreated value for hotel guests in the luxury sector. Insights are provided into the potential use of these factors to better manage employee engagement and the customer experience to facilitate value co-creation. The implications of the study and directions for future research are discussed.     

Working leisure: entertaining guests in gated tourist resorts

In the contemporary tourism sector, entertainment is a particular type of service that is increasingly provided by specialised categories of tourist and leisure workers, such as (adventure) sport instructors, tour guides or reps, or ‘pub crawling’ cicerones. However, little attention has been paid so far to the complex intermingling between work and leisure that sustains the routine ‘working leisure’ practices of this ‘entertainment staff’. By building upon the Foucauldian concept of biopower and Hardt’s notion of affective labour, this article examines how entertainment is routinely generated as a service by tourist entertainers in an enclosed tourist resort in Italy. In particular, an in-depth qualitative analysis, combined with an account of a personal experience, was used to structurally frame tourist entertainers’ daily ‘playful working’ practices into three interrelated and functionally complementary dimensions: regimentation, hostessing and experiential rewards. The findings show that entertainment, and hence a successful tourist experience, is effectively (re)generated only when ‘working (through) leisure’ practices both constrain and gratify the workers. This result corroborates the ambivalence of entertainment as biopolitical affective labour that is a subjugating but also a liberating practice.     

A process perspective on experience co-creation: How pre-trip involvement prompts destination loyalty

Although the existing literature has suggested that tourists' experience co-creation during or after trips benefits destination loyalty, knowledge of how pre-trip behavior impacts future behavioral intention from a process perspective is limited. To address the gaps, we develop a logic chain linking past behavior, cognition, emotion, and future behavioral intention under a stage-by-stage process of tourists' experience co-creation using the service-dominant logic of value co-creation theory and the self-consistency principle of attitude theory. Empirically, utilizing PLS-SEM and mediation analysis in a survey (n = 500) and an experiment (n = 128), we found a serial mediation pathway whereby high-degree pre-trip involvement heightened satisfaction with the co-creation of experience, which increased place identity or place dependence, and which ultimately enhanced destination loyalty. This research is the first attempt to examine the impact of past behavior on future intention for tourists’ experience co-creation from a process perspective.     

Tourist expertise and pre-travel value co-creation: Task-related processes and beyond

Our knowledge of how tourists could co-create value in the pre-travel stage is limited. This should be particularly worrying for tourism providers, as they could gain competitive advantage by improving their understanding of these processes and responding accordingly. Based on service-dominant logic, this study explores this gap in research by identifying three value co-creation processes that occur before a trip (travel organization, information seeking, and mental time travel) and examining the contribution of tourist expertise on each of these processes. Although previous studies tend to assimilate co-creation with “tasks,” this study focuses on mental time travel, which is the only pre-travel value co-creation process that contributes value to the consumer without involving costs. An empirical study with 984 French and Spanish tourists was conducted, the results of which corroborate the particular salience of expertise predicted by service-dominant logic.     

The stigmatized tourist

This paper explores the tourism experience of the Arab and Muslim Tourist (AMT) visiting a (Western) developed country for tourism, from a critical socio-cultural perspective. Encapsulated in Goffman’s theoretical underpinning of the study of stigma, and informed by Said’s Orientalism, I used in-depth interviews to understand the tourism experience of the AMT in an immigration context, situated in what Goffman refers to as the ‘normal-deviant drama’. In a contemporary climate of xeno/ethno-racism, The AMT is stigmatized by association with his/her nationals (or par default by semblance to those nationals), who constitute a visible ethnic immigrant group in the visited country. His/her actual social identity becomes confounded with an ascribed virtual identity. As a moral issue, stigmatization spoils the tourist identity of the AMT, resulting in feelings of shame, confusion, and anger. The rise of anti-immigrants discourse and sentiments, and the rise of religious extremism practices and sentiments in the world, begs for more attention in contemporary tourist studies.     

A MODEL OF ‘CREATIVE EXPERIENCE’ IN CREATIVE TOURISM

This study explores the essence of ‘creativity’ in ‘creative tourism’ from a tourist perspective. Creative tourism is receiving an increasing amount of attention, although the concept remains rather vague, and more research is needed. Data was collected using in-depth interviews with tourists and observations at four ‘Creative Life Industry’ sites in Taiwan. Grounded theory approach was employed, and the findings show that ‘outer interactions’ and ‘inner reflections’ construct the model of tourists’ creative experience. The former refer to tourists’ interactions with ‘environment’, ‘people’, and ‘product/service/experience’, while the latter refer to ‘consciousness/awareness’, ‘needs’ and ‘creativity’, and these dimensions ‘interact’ in tourists’ inner-self throughout the experience. Moreover, ‘consciousness/awareness’ is a prerequisite for ‘creative experience’, differentiating it from other types of experiences.     

The memorable souvenir-shopping experience: antecedents and outcomes

This study examines the relationship among authenticity, satisfaction, co-creation, memorable souvenir-shopping experiences, and place attachment. A post-holiday web-based survey was conducted among tourists to Rovaniemi, Finland, and a valid sample of 301 tourists was used for data analysis. The survey results show that satisfaction and co-creation during onsite souvenir shopping at a tourism destination create memorable souvenir shopping experiences, and that such memories enhance tourists’ feelings of attachment to the destination. The implications for retail management are that souvenir vendors should offer a large assortment of souvenirs to suit tourists’ individual tastes. Souvenir retailers can enhance customer satisfaction through taking such steps as training personnel on customer shopping satisfaction, extending operating hours, broadening the accepted means of payment, and improving the quality and display of products as well as the external appearance of their shops. Additionally, souvenir retailers should interact with customers and engage in onsite co-creation to arouse interest and attention.     

Managing the experience co-creation process in tourism destinations: Empirical findings from Naples

The aim of this study is to investigate the main antecedents and consequences of experience co-creation in tourism. Based on an in-depth literature review, a survey was designed, and data was collected from 385 tourists visiting Naples, Italy. A path analysis revealed that the interactions among tourists and tourism service providers and the active participation of tourists are antecedents of experience co-creation in the tourism industry. Experience co-creation positively affects the satisfaction of tourists, their level of expenditures, and their happiness. Study results also revealed that the attitude of tourists of sharing their experiences with others does not influence experience co-creation. As one of the first studies in this area in the field of tourism, this study contributes to the body of knowledge by proposing and empirically testing a model that shows three antecedents and three consequences of experience co-creation in tourism.     

Managing experience co-creation practices: Direct and indirect inducement in pop-up food tourism events

Consumers performing the role of value-creators in experience co-creation introduces idiosyncrasies that challenge experiential consistency. Taking ‘pop-up’ dining events as its empirical focus, and drawing on semi-structured interviews with participants, this study examines how organisations and consumers interact to negotiate ambiguity, variability and consistency. The paper questions how organisers try to prescribe normative rules governing events. It considers how consumers invest in preparing for events, and engage in socialised performances to create unique experiences. The data are also used to show how peer surveillance shapes consumer expectations, behaviours and interpretations. Consequently, this study contributes to knowledge on the practical management of co-creation by conceptualising different pathways through which organisations and consumers attempt to orchestrate behaviours. Moreover, in theorising from the data, this paper distinguishes between direct and indirect modes of inducement used to achieve experiential outcomes, identifying how ‘value-signalling’ practices engage event stakeholders and shape their co-creation.     

Hospitality co-creation with mobility-impaired people

This study aims to analyze and construct the hospitality value co-creation system of dining services for mobility-impaired persons (MIPs) by using a specific technological platform in small and medium restaurants (SMRs). The hospitality industry should take action to provide improved services to MIPs. The service-dominant logic, the methodology of service experience engineering, and research approaches in ethnography, content analysis, action research, and service design were applied to implement a hospitality co-creation service system. The result is shown in quality function deployment (QFD). The Friendly Restaurant app was developed by a social enterprise working with MIPs and SMR operators to improve the dining experience of MIPs in SMRs guided by QFD. This app comes from the hospitality co-creation system to offer a list of barrier-free restaurants, menu design, information on accessible facilities, and taxi services for various types of MIPs.     

Tourist experience quality and loyalty to an island destination: the moderating impact of destination image

This study aims to explore the relationships among tourist experience quality, perceived value, perceived price reasonableness, tourist satisfaction with tour experience, and loyalty to an island destination by considering the moderating effect of destination image. The survey was distributed in person at an international airport. The findings revealed that tourists’ involvement with tours is the core of perceived value and price reasonableness, which increases tourists’ satisfaction. Perceived value is a stronger mediator between involvement and satisfaction than perceived price reasonableness. The moderating effect of island image is also uncovered. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed based on the findings.     

Efficacy of co-creation and mastering on perceived value and satisfaction in tourists' consumption

This study explores effects of participation, namely co-creation and mastering, on the perceived value of consumers' experience and satisfaction. Co-creation comprises both physical and psychological (mental) participation, and mastering represents consumers' self-perceived knowledge and skills in taking part in experiential activities. Adventure tourism is chosen as the setting. A logit model is used to test the hypothesis. The study results reveal that tourists' mastering and psychological co-creation are significant for value perception. Further, value perception is found to mediate the relation between participation and satisfaction. Consequently, tourists' participation augments satisfaction by creating value in the experience. This study contributes to the theory in two ways. First, it reveals the importance of including the mastering and co-creation dimensions in acknowledging tourists' as resource integrators for value creation in experiences. Second, satisfaction in tourism consumption evolves through tourists' participation in creating value of the experience.