Authentic Experience, Place Attachment, and Behavioral Intention: Vietnamese Religious Tourism

Abstract

This quantitative study used the Stimulus-Organism-Response theory to examine the relationships among authentic experience, tourist satisfaction, place attachment, and behavioral intention in religious destination context. The survey questionnaire was designed to obtain the data. The responses of 566 tourists that paid a visit to the Father Diep Church, a famous religious destination in southern Vietnam, were analyzed. The results revealed that tourist satisfaction significantly influenced on place attachment, destination revisit intention, and word-of-mouth. Furthermore, word-of-mouth and revisit intentions were sharply and positively impacted by place attachment, whereas the influence of authentic experience on tourist satisfaction, revisit intention, and word-of-mouth was noteworthy. Moreover, demographic factors, such as being female, being a business tourist, and observing a different religion (non-Catholic), were associated with higher revisit intention. These findings could provide guidelines for developing marketing strategies for religious destinations and be theoretically based on for further empirical validation.