The emergence of social media has revolutionized tourists’ decision-making processes and behaviours. This study focuses on the effect of user-generated content (UGC) on tourist loyalty behaviour by examining structural relationships between destination image, satisfaction, revisit intention, and word-of-mouth (WOM) publicity. Data were collected from domestic tourists to Gulangyu, a World Heritage Site in China. The findings of this study reveal that UGC indirectly affects tourist loyalty behaviour by influencing destination image and satisfaction. Moreover, the results demonstrate that factual UGC and emotional UGC positively affect tourists’ perceived value of the destination, with emotional UGC having a greater influence.

Health is an ultimate goal that people continue to pursue through various means including traveling. This study draws on three theoretical strands – goal-directed behavior, normative social influence, and the theory of fantasy realization – to synthesize a framework that takes personal (i.e. health consciousness) and socio-political forces (i.e. social and political conformity) as impetuses to tourists’ health goal pursuit through rural-eco travel opportunities. The current inquiry takes a quantitative approach with data driven from rural-eco sites to project how conformity and health consciousness could jointly influence tourists’ health-directed travel desire through changes in their attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control.

Extending narrative transportation theory, the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of online reviews on destination choice and purchasing behaviour at a destination and to clarify the role of prior destination knowledge and perceived usefulness of online reviews. Data were collected from 432 tourists in Gulangyu, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in China. The results of structural equation modelling analysis validate the positive effect of online reviews on tourists’ destination choice and purchasing behaviour. This study offers both theoretical and policy implications to understand how tourists reference online reviews to make travel-related decisions.

Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) at all levels have an ultimate goal of building strong and positive images for their destinations. However, the projected image from the supply side is not necessarily the mirror of the perceived image from the demand side. This study adopted the content analysis method to evaluate the projected image and perceived image of rural destinations in China to see whether there is any discrepancy between and within the two categories. Comparative analysis of different information sources including web contents and on-site visitor interviews were processed. The evaluation of image congruency demonstrates that official websites focus more on cognitive image elements (knowledge and beliefs of the place). Besides promoting attractions, it provides information on geography background and promotes local culture. Business web content promotes attractions, package tour, and activities which can generate revenue. The perceived image includes more sentiment contents: on-site visitors expressed more negative attitude, but social media comments are relatively positive.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of educational, aesthetic, entertainment and escapist experiences on the perceptions of functional, emotional and social value as well as homestay visitor satisfaction and behavioural intentions. A total of 472 respondents completed a survey conducted at 45 homestays on the Chinese mainland. Using structural equation modelling (SEM), it is found that aesthetic and escapist experiences are significant predictors of perceived functional, emotional and social value by visitors. Educational experience affects emotional value, but entertainment experience does not affect functional, emotional or social values. Functional, emotional and social values affect homestay tourist satisfaction, which in turn drives behavioural intention.