Affiliation:
1. Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management Sejong University Gwangjin‐gu Seoul Republic of Korea
2. Department of Food Science and Nutrition Pukyong National University Nam‐gu Busan Republic of Korea
3. School of Economics and Management Dalian University of Technology Dalian Liaoning Province China
4. School of Community Resources & Development, The Hainan University—Arizona State University Joint International Tourism College Arizona State University Phoenix Arizona USA
Abstract
AbstractVoluntourism has been increasingly researched in tourism studies. However, the need remains to better understand what drives memorable experiences in such a context. This research applied mindfulness theory in the setting of voluntourism. The influence of mindfulness among voluntourists was studied along with dimensions of memorable tourism experiences (MTEs, i.e., hedonism, involvement, meaningfulness, knowledge, novelty, and local culture) and revisit intention among voluntourists. A structural model was employed with twelve hypotheses pertaining to data collected from 342 Chinese residents who had prior voluntourism experience before data collection in March 2020. For data analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to test relationships between variables. Data analysis demonstrated that mindfulness significantly influenced all six dimensions of MTEs in this study. Four of the dimensions of MTE (i.e., hedonism, involvement, meaningfulness, and local culture) significantly influenced revisit intention.