Visiting Intangible Cultural Heritage Tourism Sites: From Value Cognition to Attitude and Intention

Abstract

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) has recently become an important area of tourism development for many countries that are home to such cultural resources. Within this context, the value of an ICH site has often been used to guide tourism development and policy making. In addition, community residents’ attitude and perception of ICH contribute to tourism development. In this study, we used the traditional firing technology of Longquan celadon in Zhejiang Province, China, as a case study to understand the relationships between value recognition and attitude along with the intention to visit the heritage site. We surveyed 368 residents and conducted path analysis to test such relationships. Findings revealed significant positive correlations between residents’ cognition of ICH value, their attitudes and travel intentions. Among them, attitudes played a mediating role in the formation of value cognition to travel intention. These findings offer insights into ICH-related tourism development, particularly regarding tourism product design, marketing and post-development evaluation, as well as the conservation of ICH sites.