Reminiscing Other People’s Memories: Conceptualizing and Measuring Vicarious Nostalgia Evoked by Heritage Tourism

Abstract

This mixed-methods study conceptualized and developed a scale to measure vicarious nostalgia in heritage tourism. Based on a comprehensive literature review, vicarious nostalgia was conceptualized with three dimensions: past-oriented cognition, evoked positive, and negative emotion. Rigorous scale development procedures were followed using six studies that involved multisample totaling 1,020 subjects. Besides content, discriminant and convergent validity, this study also assessed the scale’s nomological and external validity by testing a nomological model in different cultural contexts. It was revealed that vicarious nostalgia is driven by authenticity seeking; past-oriented cognition results in both evoked positive and negative emotion, which strongly predict tourists’ visit intentions. This study is believed to be the first to develop a scale for measuring vicarious nostalgia in tourism.