Can Commercialization Reduce Tourists’ Experience Quality? Evidence From Xijiang Miao Village in Guizhou,China

Abstract

The phenomenon of tourism commercialization in the context of China has transcended the research scope for Western commodification and has become a special topic for destination research, particularly in ethnic minority villages in China. Limited research has as yet drawn attention to the relationship between commercialization and experience quality. The main purpose of this research is to analyze the effect of tourism commercialization on tourists’ experience quality. Specifically, the study examines the interrelationships between five main constructs: tourism commercialization, perceived value, experience quality, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. Using a sample drawn from the Xijiang Miao Village in China, a structural equation modeling approach is applied in the research model investigating 10 hypotheses. The results show that tourism commercialization has a positive influence on tourists’ experience quality and an indirect effect on others constructs, the implications are discussed with reference to the future development of tourism in the ethnic minority villages.

Keywords

tourism commercialization experience quality satisfaction behavioral intentions Guizhou

Introduction

Since the 1980s, cultural attractions, such as ethnic villages and heritage towns, have been among the preferred destinations for Chinese tourists (H. Wang, Yang, Chen, Yang, & Li, 2010), mostly driven by the demands of domestic tourism. Meanwhile, due to the development of mass tourism, cultural attractions have presented a unique phenomenon: a large number of stores, KTVs, bars, inns, and local culture products that are commoditized (Bao & Su, 2004; Hughes, 1995; Xiong & Li, 2012) were created to service and sell only to tourists. The scale development of tourism is constantly changing the local social value system, and the degree of tourism commercialization is further aggravated by the value conversion and exchange of traditional culture, rituals, costumes, and handicrafts (Pearce, 1989).

The phenomenon of commercialization in tourism destination has been a special topic in China. It is worth noting that the concept of tourism commercialization in the context of China has transcended the original meaning of commodification. Concerning the cultural commodification as the objectification by “the West” of a cultural other (S. Cole, 2007), Cohen (1988), Greenwood (1989), and MacCannell (1973) argued that commodification is the disappearance of meaning and conversion of value functions for local culture pushed by tourism development. However, commercialization under oriental culture is a phenomenon of spatial agglomeration based on the commodification in destinations, mostly existing in ethnic villages or heritage towns that have been flooded with a large number of service products; tourists are mainly objects and customer groups (Bao & Su, 2004); in addition, resorts are flooded with homogeneous and commoditized cultural products and tourism service products which are mass-produced facsimiles (Yang, Wall, & Smith, 2008).

Although some of the literature has examined the driving mechanism, spatial pattern, government intervention, and authenticity with commercialization (Bao & Lin, 2014; Bao & Su, 2004; Huang, Cao, & Huang, 2014; Li, Wu, & Tang, 2006; Wu, Su, & Jiang, 2015), limited studies have focused on the relationship between tourism commercialization and tourists’ experience quality (Bao & Lin, 2014; MacCannell, 1973), and how this phenomenon affects tourists’ perceived value, satisfaction, and their postbehavior. For example, MacCannell (1973) argued that tourists quest for authentic experience perceptions, but commodification, as the core of tourism commercialization, may destroy tourists’ expectation. A study conducted by Bao and Lin (2014) argued that the commercialization to a certain extent will discourage tourists’ willingness to visit ethnic villages. Meanwhile, as the dominant constructs in studies of tourism marketing, perceived value, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions are more susceptible to the external environment variables, such as tourism commercialization, furthermore, the results is linked to marketing strategies (Gallarza & Saura, 2006). Thus, from the perspective of tourists, how do the tourists regard this phenomenon, and can commercialization reduce the tourists’ experience quality, perceived value, satisfaction? There still is a research gap and controversy for the effect of commercialization. What tourists seek and experience is the authenticity of local culture (Greenwood, 1989), but unoriginal, meaningless commoditized culture products and a large number of homogeneous tourism services products, clustered in ethnic villages, can reduce tourists’ experience quality and satisfaction. On the contrary, other scholars have noted that commercialization could supplement and balance the category of tourism products to promote tourists’ experience (Li et al., 2006; Zhang, Ma, Wang, & Yu, 2008), and tourists always rely on shopping to preserve their experience (Swanson & Timothy, 2012).

Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop and test a theoretical framework that postulated tourism commercialization as a predictor to experience quality, perceived value, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. First, this study developed and verified the scale for the tourism commercialization construct through different samples. Second, it examined whether tourism commercialization can reduce the quality of tourists’ experience. Specifically, this article investigates the interrelationships between five constructs. Third, based on model of dual attitudes (Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000), this study analyzed the phenomenon of tourists contrary attitudes toward commercialization between interview and empirical results in theory.

The remainder of the article is structured as follows: Section “Literature Review and Hypothesis Development” contains reviews for five constructs and develops main 10 hypotheses; Section “Method” describes the data in detail and the development process of scale for tourism commercialization construct; Section “Data Analysis and Results” describes the process and results for structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis; Section “Discussion” concludes theoretical and practical contributions.

Literature Review and Hypothesis Development

Tourism Commercialization

Many researchers have attempted to define tourism commercialization. Bao and Su (2004) defined tourism commercialization as a description for certain commercial phenomenon in the tourism destination; there are two significant characteristics: (a) Business function is transformed, driven by tourism development; the numbers of store for tourists constitute a large proportion in total stores, and even more than for local people and (b) Homogeneous products are prevalent; the amount of ethnic handicrafts reduced, and shoddy handicrafts are mass-produced, flooding the market. Comparing the development of tourism commercialization between 2003 and 2009 in the Xidi Town (World Cultural Heritage), stores catering to tourists accounted for 87% of the total (Bao & Lin, 2014). From the perspective of the forming and driving mechanism, Xu (2005) defined tourism commercialization as the outcome of economic capital substituting monopolistically for the unique local culture. That means local cultural capital such as rituals, costumes and folk arts, and so on, have been replaced and transformed by obtaining travel benefits. It is worth noting that Bao and Su (2004) did not clearly differentiate between “Homogeneity” for products, which indicates local cultural commodities or tourism service products. However, in practice, shoddy handicrafts manufactured for sale to tourists, which have lost their original meaning (Li et al., 2006), and the service products, which are homogeneous, are already a fact of the tourism commercialization phenomenon.

Thus, the core of the definition for tourism commercialization is commodification of local cultural products (Medina, 2003) and tourism service products, which are homogeneous and mass-clustered in the destination. In this study, based on the definition of Bao and Su (2004), we define tourism commercialization in a multidimensional nature, as a phenomenon of mass-clustered tourism products based on commodification, existing in the scenic areas of ethnic villages or heritage towns. Specifically, there are massive increases for commoditized culture products and homogeneous service products for entertainments, services, and businesses.

There are significant differences between tourism commercialization and commodification. Commodification was explained as “The meaning is gone” (Greenwood, 1989), with traditional activities, rituals, and symbols affected by tourism development. From the perspective of existential authenticity, commodification destroys not only the meaning of cultural products (MacCannell, 1973) but also the relationship with tourists and forces tourists to look for authenticity from “back regions.” Cohen (1988, p. 380) defined commoditization as “a process by which things (and activities) come to be evaluated primarily in terms of their exchange value, in a context of trade, thereby becoming goods (services).” Thus, commodification is an evaluation process of exchange values for locals by way of currency. The commodification implies the meaning is weakened, absent, and reconstructed for the local culture. The core for commodification is the local culture. However, tourism commercialization, as a form of spatial circumstance, not only relates to the culture commodification but also includes the homogenization and large-scale of service products in the destination. While Cohen (1989) mentioned the four stages of commercialization as complementary, substitutive, encroaching, and rehabilitative in the research of ethnic craft, the perspective is from business operations for tourism souvenirs, differentiating tourism commercialization in the context of China, as well as Friedrich and Johnston (2013), Mostafanezhad’s (2014) researches.

Research has shown that tourism commercialization could bring various effects on local sightseeing destinations, such as changing living patterns for local people (Bao & Su, 2004; Wu et al., 2015), confusing perceived authenticity in heritage destination (MacCannell, 1973; Zhang et al., 2008), and even reducing tourists’ experience and satisfaction (Bao & Lin, 2014; Y. Wang, Shi, & Chen, 2007; Xiong & Li, 2012). Pervious study indicated that tourism commercialization, as an external phenomenon, has the negative impact on the environment of cultural sightseeing (Bao & Lin, 2014). According to environmental psychology, the change in outsider circumstances has an effect on the judgment of individual’s perceived value to products or services (Robert & John, 1982), further influencing the emotions and decision making (Ryu & Jang, 2007). The studies by Bao and Su (2004), Xiong and Li (2012) indicated that the facts, sightseeing destinations are filled with a lot of commoditized culture products and service products due to the commercialization, which may negatively influence tourists’ perceived value, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. Meanwhile, commodification, as the core of tourism commercialization, could reduce the authenticity perceived by tourist, further negatively influencing tourist’s experience quality and postconsumer behavior (Greenwood, 1989; MacCannell, 1973). The study by Y. Wang et al. (2007) about sustainable development of ancient towns in Jiangnan indicated that commercialization weakens the authentic cultural atmosphere and misleads the tourists’ cognition and experience. Xiong and Li (2012) argued that commercialization phenomenon may reduce tourists’ experience quality theoretically. Based on the above discussion, this study proposes the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1₀: Tourism commercialization has a negative influence on perceived value.

Hypothesis 1_a: Tourism commercialization does not have a negative influence on perceived value.

Hypothesis 2₀: Tourism commercialization has a negative influence on experience quality.

Hypothesis 2_a: Tourism commercialization does not have a negative influence on experience quality.

Hypothesis 3₀: Tourism commercialization has a negative influence on satisfaction.

Hypothesis 3_a: Tourism commercialization does not have a negative influence on satisfaction.

Hypothesis 4₀: Tourism commercialization has a negative influence on behavioral intentions.

Hypothesis 4_a: Tourism commercialization does not have a negative influence on behavioral intentions.

Perceived Value

Perceived value is customers’ evaluation for the performance of products and services (Woodruff, 1997) and is also an important concept for assessing the satisfaction and behavioral intentions in marketing. There are two types of definitions from the perspective of unidimensional or multidimensional, and the core difference is whether value combination is accumulated (Sánchez-Fernández & Iniesta-Bonillo, 2007).

In a unidimensional nature, perceived value is regarded as a trade-off between quality and time costs (Dodds & Monroe, 1985). For instance, Zeithaml (1988, p. 14) defined perceived value as “the consumers’ overall assessment of the utility of a product based on perceptions of what is received and what is given.” Moreover, other scholars regarded that the definition in a multidimensional nature would be more accurate for assessing value (Sweeney & Soutar, 2001). Therefore, perceived value was defined and the structure of value was analyzed from the perspective of the customer value hierarchy, hedonic and values (Babin, Darden, & Griffin, 1994; Sheth, Newman, & Gross, 1991; Woodruff, 1997). For example, based on the means-end type of model Woodruff (1997, p. 142) defined that customer value is “a customer’s perceived preference for and evaluation of those product attributes, attribute performances, and consequences.” However, multidimensional perceived value is more subjective and complicated (Lapierre, 2000; Parasuraman & Grewal, 2000), further leading to the differences of interpretation and application in different research conditions. In this study, considering the complexity of commercialization phenomenon, perceived value is adopted by the Zeithaml (1988) definition, as the overall assessment for utility of products and services based on perceptions of what is received and what is given.

Previous researches have verified that perceived value has positive effect on satisfaction and behavioral intentions (Bajs, 2015; Chen & Chen, 2010; Ha & Jang, 2010). For instance, Bajs (2015) examined the relationships among perceived value, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions in the tourist destination of Dubrovnik, and found that perceived value has a significant positive effect on satisfaction and intended future behavior. Meanwhile, previous studies by Bolton and Drew (1991), Day and Crask (2000) have verified that perceived value is significantly different from quality. As a subjective psychological dynamic process (Cohen, 1979), the tourist experience is more comprehensive and deeper. Based on the trade-off model, perceived value mainly emphasizes on functional value and utility (Williams & Soutar, 2000), but positively affect customer’s emotion. Based on the above discussion, we postulate that perceived value, as an antecedent construct, has positive effect on experience quality. Therefore, this study puts forward the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 5₀: Perceived value has a positive influence on experience quality.

Hypothesis 5_a: Perceived value does not have a positive influence on experience quality.

Hypothesis 6₀: Perceived value has a positive influence on satisfaction.

Hypothesis 6_a: Perceived value does not have a positive influence on satisfaction.

Hypothesis 7₀: Perceived value has a positive influence on behavioral intentions.

Hypothesis 7_a: Perceived value does not have a positive influence on behavioral intentions.

Experience Quality

As individual psychological emotions, “experience” was first described by Csikszentmihalyi in 1975. Meanwhile, from the perspective of the psychology, phenomenology, and sociology, Csikszentmihalyi (1975), Cohen (1979), and Ryan (2002) indicated tourists’ experience is a subjective psychological process (Quan & Wang, 2004). As a process of status, Cohen (1979) distinguished five main modes of tourists’ experiences: recreational, diversionary, experiential, experimental, and existential mode, and argued that tourist experience is a quest from structural function to spiritual center. Experience quality is defined in multidimensional nature and there is no clear consensus for what constitutes experience quality. Csikszentmihalyi and LeFevre (1989), for instance, measured the quality of experience from affect, potency, cognitive efficiency, and motivation. Otto and Ritchie (1996) utilized factors such as subjectivity, affection, and experience to leisure tourism and further measured the quality of tourist experience according to the following dimensions: hedonics, peace of mind and involvement, and so on; in addition, Aho (2001) believed that the core for tourist experience is affective, learning, experimental, and empathic. Therefore, as tourists’ psychological process, the core of tourism experience is a mirror of the cumulative emotional state. The quality of the tourist experience is the perceived evaluation of excellence or superiority (Lemke, Clark, & Wilson, 2011). In this study, considering the scope and applicability of concept, Otto and Richie’s (1996) definition is adopted and the quality of the tourist experience is a comprehensive, hedonic, and interactive evaluation for tourists’ emotions.

Considering the attributes for tourism products: initiative, involvement, and process, it should be noticed that there is a significant difference between the quality of the tourism experience and service quality (Crompton & Love, 1995; Mustafa & Erkut, 2015). Service experience is the tourist’s perception of service (Swinyard, 1993); its essence is the perceived experience for concrete services and products (Quan & Wang, 2004), for example, hotel, restaurant, traffic, and others, distinguishing the tourist experience in the nature of comprehensiveness. Additionally, that is not a simply accumulation for the service quality. Meanwhile, service quality is the objective evaluation for specific attributions of services and products (S. T. Cole & Scott, 2004), dominated by providers, that is, static quality evaluation based on empirical investigation. In contrast, the quality of the tourist experience is a dynamic process, an evaluation for accumulative emotions dominated by tourists.

The previous studies have confirmed the relationships between tourist experience and its quality with decision-making and behavioral intentions (Chen & Chen, 2010; S. T. Cole & Scott, 2004; Han & Back, 2007; Mustafa & Erkut, 2015). For example, the research by Burton, Sheather, and Roberts (2003) concluded that the tourist experience has a significant positive effect on behavioral intentions. S. T. Cole and Scott (2004) took rainforest tourism as an example and found that the quality of the tourist experience, as mediator, positively affected tourists’ satisfaction. In addition, the research by Mustafa and Erkut (2015) indicated that the experience quality positively affected tourists’ satisfaction and recommendation intention in cultural tourism. Therefore, this study puts forward the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 8₀: Experience quality has a positive influence on behavioral intentions.

Hypothesis 8_a: Experience quality does not have a positive influence on behavioral intentions.

Hypothesis 9₀: Experience quality has a positive influence on satisfaction.

Hypothesis 9_a: Experience quality does not have a positive influence on satisfaction.

Satisfaction and Behavioral Intentions

That satisfaction and behavioral intentions, as the key factors, have received growing attention in the marketing and consumer behavior. As the antecedent variable for behavioral intentions and loyalty (Oliver, 1980), satisfaction was researched mainly from the cognitive and affective perspective (van Dolen, de Ruyter, & Lemmink, 2004).

Oliver (1980) argued that satisfaction is the consumers’ cognitive process based on comparing between expectation and difference and is the reaction convergence between performances and standards. In addition, satisfaction is affected by the consumers’ emotional process (Oliver, 1997). For example, satisfaction was defined by Rust and Oliver (1994) as the customer’s fulfillment response, which is an evaluation as well as an emotion-based response to a service (Olorunniwo, Hsu, & Udo, 2006). Meanwhile, van Dolen et al. (2004) further divided satisfaction into the encounter satisfaction and relationship satisfaction. According to previous research studies, satisfaction is a multidimensional construct and is an over satisfaction constituted by attribution and information satisfaction (Spreng, MacKenzie, & Olshavsky, 1996). This research adopts Rust and Oliver’s (1994) definition. The scholarly literature has verified that behavioral intentions are positively affected by satisfaction (Ali, Ryu, & Hussain, 2016; Ryu, Lee, & Kim, 2012; Zeithaml, Berry, & Parasuraman, 1996). Accordingly, satisfaction will have an effect on tourists’ behavioral intentions in ethnic minority villages. Therefore, this study puts forward the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 10₀: Satisfaction has a positive influence on behavioral intentions.

Hypothesis 10_a: Satisfaction does not have a positive influence on behavioral intentions.

Based on the previous literature review, the conceptual model and 10 hypotheses for five constructs are depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 1

The Conceptual Model

Method

In this research, the study site is the Xijiang Miao Village located in the Qiandongnan autonomous, Guizhou Province, China. The village is a typical small village of Miao culture settlement and has 1,285 households containing more than 5,120 people, among which the Miao population accounts for 99.5% of the population. In particular, the Xijiang village is the largest settlement inhabited by Miao people in China (and the world). They have preserved the rituals, costumes, and folk arts of the Miao nationality completely, such as the Guzang Festival, which is held every 13 years and the Miao New Year, and so on. The Xijiang village started development in 2008, covering a core area of approximately 0.7 square kilometers with a total number of 318 stores and inns, and receiving an average of 3.5 million tourists per year. The photos of the study site are provided in supplemental information file of this article.

This study mainly uses quantitative research methods. First, using semistructured interview to collect initial items, the scale for the tourism commercialization construct is developed and tested by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). To avoid the data-driven results, this article uses two different samples to verify the commercialization scale. Second, through questionnaire survey and SEM, the conceptual model is examined including one exogenous variable and four endogenous variables.

Questionnaire Design and Measurement

The questionnaire consists of two parts. One is the Scale Part used to accurately measure the five main constructs; another is the Demographic Part used to reflect the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents including gender, age, profession, and so on.

The measurement scales of the tourism commercialization construct were developed according to Churchill (1979) and Hinkin’s (1995) suggestions and procedures. A comprehensive literature review (Tourism commercialization: e.g., Bao & Su, 2004; N. Wang, 1999b) was first conducted to generate items. Meanwhile, the semistructured interview was applied to supplement the items of the construct. A total of 20 tourists, who had visited Xijiang Miao village in the past 3 months, were recruited through snowball sampling from January to March, 2015. The participants were 9 males and 11 females. The ages of interviewees ranged from 25 to 40 years; their profession included student, teacher, civil servants, and staff (for state-owned or private enterprise). This research made effort to obtain more representation information from respondents of various backgrounds. Open-ended questions were provided. The length of each interview ranged from 40 to 50 minutes, and interviewees were asked to provide contact information to check item content. In order to fully understand tourism commercialization, the definition was first provided to respondents in the interviews. Furthermore, some questions were asked. For example, what events/experiences made you have a feeling of commercialization during visiting Xijiang Miao village? Please describe the status quo of tourism commercialization in Xijiang Miao village.

According to the suggestions and procedures of content analysis by Kassarjian (1977), the study analyzed, coded, and categorized the content of the responses. The method of thematic analysis was used to identify and describe the themes of tourism commercialization. First, the appropriate unit of analysis was identified by trained judges. The two judges independently read and tagged the transcripts over and over again, and discussed to reach agreement for controversial unit. A total of 251 valid units were identified. Furthermore, the units were categorized into 12 different themes by two judges. Second, in order to obtain category reliability, two additional judges who are tourism scholars were asked to perform the content analysis independently again. Kassarjian (1977) argued that the interjudge reliability is a ratio of coding agreements to the total number of coding decisions and is satisfied above .85. As a result, the coefficient of reliability was .92. Thus, the results of content analysis are reliability. Meanwhile, the findings indicated that most themes are consistent with those in literature review. Thereby, three items were added after semistructured interview.

By combining items from above two sources, 12 items related to the 3 potential dimensions were determined including social (4 items), business (4 items), and commodification (4 items). Accordingly, modifications were made to fit the items to the reality by interviewees. The initial item pool was submitted to a panel of experts comprising three tourism and hospitality scholars to obtain content validity. The panel judged the applicability and representativeness of the items. According to the panel’s suggestions, initial items were modified. Finally, 12 items for tourism commercialization construct were included for data collection.

A self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted to pretest the questionnaire with tourists from June to July, 2015 (Sample 1). A total of 160 questionnaires were distributed and 140 usable responses were obtained, yielding a response rate of 87.5%. The demographic profile of the respondents is provided in the supplement file. EFA was applied to decide the dimensions of the tourism commercialization construct on the data, according to Byrne’s (1998) requirements: Eigenvalue root is more than 1; factor loadings are more than .5; no cross-loading factors; total variance explanation is more than 60%; at least three items are employed for one dimension. Based on these rules, an iterative process led to the removal of one item from tourism commercialization. The removed item has a similar concept to the remaining items. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measurement of sampling adequacy yielded a result of .791, and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was 527.333 (p < .000). In addition, the internal consistency reliability was then examined using Cronbach’s alpha. The reliability of the 11-item scale is .824, indicating that the tourism commercialization scale is highly reliable. A final three-factor model was extracted, with the remaining 11 items. The items included Factor 1 (social circumstance), Factor 2 (business circumstance), Factor 3 (commodification circumstance).

The perceived value was measured by three items adopted from the literature review (Cronin, Brady, & Hult, 2000; Kuo, Wu, & Deng, 2009). For the measurement of experience quality, this study employed a revised version of Otto and Ritchie’s (1996) scales. Considering the purpose of the original scale for hotels, airline, and tour attractions, the items were modified to adapt to the context of ethnic minority villages in China. Due to their inapplicability in this study, some items were not included. Finally, three items were applied to measure the experience quality. Although the past literatures have shown that satisfaction is a complex concept, this article mainly focuses on tourists’ total satisfaction and its relationship with other constructs in the context of tourism commercialization. Based on the performance-based approach, this article adopted the concept and measurement for satisfaction, consistent with Ha and Jang’s (2010) research. To measure satisfaction, this study adopted the scales including three items from Taylor and Baker (1994), Cronin et al. (2000), and Kuo et al. (2009). Behavioral intentions were measured by three items adopted from existing research (Taylor & Baker, 1994; Zeithaml et al., 1996). A 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) was used to measure all items. In addition, to guarantee consistency with original scale, all items were translated into Chinese and then retranslated into English by native English speakers.

Data Collection and Demography

A self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted to collect the second set data and used the convenience sampling method from September to October, 2015 (Sample 2). Visitors who had finished their travels in that spot were asked to participate in the investigation. Of the 300 distributed questionnaires, 227 usable responses were obtained after removing incomplete samples, yielding a response rate of 75.7%.

According to descriptive analysis of the demography, 53.7% were female tourists, compared with male tourists (46.3%), and the age distribution was 64.3% between 25 and 44. The participants’ professions were staff members of state-owned enterprises as well as others being the main target of sampling, accounting for more than 60%. The tourists generally had associate (21.6%) or bachelor’s (59.5%) degrees. Some 73.1% of those sampled had a monthly income of more than RMB3,500.

Data Analysis and Results

Assessment of the Developed Latent Structure

CFA was used to ensure a stable factor structure of the tourism commercialization extracted from the previous EFA. The estimation of the 11-item, 3-factor model provided an acceptable fit for the second set of data: The χ²/df (degrees of freedom) was 2.615 (comparative fit index [CFI] = .927, incremental fit index [IFI] = .928, normed fit index [NFI] = .889, root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = .073). In addition, convergent validity and discriminant validity were verified in the following.

Reliability and Validity

Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability (CR) were used to guarantee the reliability. The results showed that Cronbach’s alpha of the entire scales was .847, and each constructs’ alpha was larger than .7, Furthermore, the CR was larger than .7. That means all measurement scales have satisfactory reliability.

Validity analysis included convergent validity and discriminant validity. For convergent validity, the examination requires that standardized factor loading of each observation was greater than .5, and t tests were statistically significant (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). The results showed all factor loading ranged between .530 and .965 and were statistically significant (p < .001). It should be noted that the factor loading for one of the items in the dimension of commodification circumstance exceeds .95 and there may be collinearity with other items. However, taking into account the feature of tourism commercialization under the context of China and for the purpose of measurement integrity, this article retained the item. Correlation and average variance extracted (AVE) was used to assess discriminant validity. The correlation between two variables was less than .85 (Hung & Petrick, 2012), and the AVE square root was greater than the correlation. Thus, the measurement had adequate convergent validity and discriminant validity. However, the AVE indexes for social circumstance, business circumstance, experience quality, and satisfaction were marginally below .5, but the CR for those constructs ranged between .69 and .77, confirming each construct had adequate internal consistency.

To further verify the property of the entire measurement scales, CFA was applied for all constructs. According to Bagozzi and Yi (1988) and Byrne’s (1998) suggestions for the model fitting index, the results showed that the estimation of the CFA was acceptable. The χ²/df was 1.725 (p < .000), the RMSEA was .057 (CFI = .924, IFI = .925, NFI = .839). Therefore, the model met the requirements of the model fit and did not need to be modified.

Structural Model Testing

The SEM was used to test the conceptual model and hypotheses with the maximum likelihood method. The fit indices of the structural path model (χ²/df = 1.689, p < .001; CFI = .925, IFI = .926, NFI = .837, RMSEA = .055) showed that the structural model fit the data fairly well (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988; Byrne, 1998).

The results of analysis indicated four hypotheses were supported; specifically, Hypothesis 5₀, Hypothesis 6₀, Hypothesis 9₀, Hypothesis 10₀ were supported, and the other hypotheses were not supported (Table 1). It is noteworthy that Hypothesis 1₀ testing was significant. The result indicated that tourism commercialization has a positive influence on perceived value (t = 2.511, p < .05). Hypothesis 5₀ and Hypothesis 6₀ indicated that perceived value does affect experience quality and satisfaction positively (t = 5.831, p < .001; t = 5.463, p < .001). Hypothesis 9₀ was supported by showing a positive relationship between experience and satisfaction (t = 1.972, p < .05). Finally, satisfaction did significantly affect behavioral intentions, supporting Hypothesis 10₀ (t = 2.866, p < .01).

Table 1

The Results of Proposed Model

Hypothesized Path	Standardized coefficients	t	Results
Hypothesis 1₀: Tourism commercialization → perceived value	0.229	2.511*	Unsupported
Hypothesis 2₀: Tourism commercialization → experience quality	−0.078	−0.931	Unsupported
Hypothesis 3₀: Tourism commercialization → satisfaction	0.011	0.148	Unsupported
Hypothesis 4₀: Tourism commercialization → behavioral intentions	0.068	0.949	Unsupported
Hypothesis 5₀: Perceived value → experience quality	0.603	5.831***	Supported
Hypothesis 6₀: Perceived value → satisfaction	0.736	5.463***	Supported
Hypothesis 7₀: Perceived value → behavioral intentions	−0.028	−0.131	Unsupported
Hypothesis 8₀: Experience quality → behavioral intentions	0.141	1.347	Unsupported
Hypothesis 9₀: Experience quality → satisfaction	0.196	1.972*	Supported
Hypothesis 10₀: Satisfaction → behavioral intentions	0.749	2.866**	Supported

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

According to the method and suggestions (Baron & Kenny, 1986; Lu, Chi, & Liu, 2015; Sobel, 1982), the study also explored the mediating effects of perceived value and experience quality. Analysis details are provided in supplement file. According to results, tourism commercialization has a positive indirect effect on experience quality (.138) mediated by perceived value. In addition, there exists an indirect effect between tourism commercialization and satisfaction (.180) and behavioral intentions (.145). Meanwhile, results show that positive impacts partially mediated the effects of experience quality on support for perceived value and satisfaction (.118).

Discussion

Theoretical Implications

This study extended and tested a theoretical model to examine the effect of tourism commercialization on the experience quality and tourist behaviors from an integrated approach. The study has following theoretical implications for tourism commercialization research. First, based on oriental culture, this study summarized the attributes and structures of tourism commercialization, and further analyzed the differences and relationships between commercialization and commodification. The study argued that tourism commercialization is a phenomenon of mass-clustered tourism products based on commodification in sightseeing destination. Meanwhile, previous studies have discussed theoretically that tourism commercialization has important effect on tourist’ experience, satisfaction, and so on (Bao & Lin, 2014; MacCannell, 1973; Y. Wang et al., 2007; Xiong & Li, 2012). However, limited by the lack of measurement, few studies have examined tourism commercialization as a predictor of tourists’ attitude. To fill this gap, this study developed the scales for commercialization construct. The findings demonstrated that three underlying dimensions of tourism commercialization are identified, including social, business and commodification circumstance.

Second, the current study reinforced the importance of understanding the relationships between tourism commercialization and experience quality (Figure 2). The study found that tourism commercialization has a positive indirect impact on experience quality mediated by perceived value. This result provides empirical support for Cloke and Perkins (2002), Li et al. (2006), and Zhang et al.’s (2008) research on the function of commercialization. The commercialization would be integrated with locals as the new form by tourists, remaining “authentic” and “creative” (Daniel, 1996). Specifically, tourism commercialization has a positive influence on perceived value, supporting for studies by Daniel (1996) and Zhang et al. (2008). For instance, Zhang et al. (2008) argued that the authenticity reconstructed under the background of commercialization would meet tourists’ need for experience. In addition, perceived value has a positive effect on experience quality. This result confirmed that perceived value, emphasizing on functional value, can positively affect customer’s emotion for experience. Thus, the positive link of “tourism commercialization → perceived value → experience quality” was confirmed.

Figure 2

The Results of Testing Hypothetical Model

Meanwhile, the results also demonstrate that perceived value and experience quality had the mediating role among tourism commercialization, perceived value, and satisfaction. Specifically, tourism commercialization can promote slightly tourists’ satisfaction mediated by perceived value. Tourism commercialization will contribute to development in the scenic areas of ethnic minority villages (Li et al., 2006), simultaneously improving the satisfaction and influencing behavioral intentions. In addition, experience quality, as a process of accumulation for emotions, partially mediates the influence of perceived value on satisfaction, consistent with S. T. Cole and Scott (2004) and Han and Back’s (2007) research. Thus, the positive and significant link of “tourism commercialization → perceived value → satisfaction” and “perceived value → experience quality → satisfaction” were also confirmed.

This research also tested the relationships among perceived value, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions under the context of commercialization. Consistent with previous studies (Ali et al., 2016; Bajs, 2015; Chen & Chen, 2010; Ha & Jang, 2010; Ryu et al., 2012), results indicated that perceived value is an antecedent factor for satisfaction and behavioral intentions, and satisfaction has a positive effect on behavioral intentions

Third, the study also found that tourists have a “mixed” evaluation attitude to tourism commercialization. The participants were opposed to commercialization in interview analysis; tourism commercialization can cause the destruction of the authenticity of the ethnic culture, further reducing tourist’ experience, consistent with Greenwood (1989) and MacCannell’s (1973) research. However, the empirical result indicated that commercialization does not reduce tourists’ experience quality and furthermore has an indirectly positive impact on satisfaction and behavioral intentions.

According to Wilson et al.’s (2000) model of dual attitudes, peoples have explicit attitudes and implicit attitudes toward the same object and are influenced by cognitive capacity and motivation; explicit attitudes will be shown at suitable occasions. This study argued that the reason for two different attitudes was tourists’ identification of the different types of authenticity of the ethnic culture. The implicit attitudes, opposing the tourism commercialization, are tourists’ cognition and depiction (Wilson et al., 2000) for objective authenticity (N. Wang, 1999a) of the ethnic culture, and there are also a direct reflection and attitudes for the phenomenon: “commercialization would affect ethnic culture.” Additionally, the reason for explicit attitudes for supporting commercialization (rather than like) is that authenticity experienced by tourists was constructive authenticity (N. Wang, 1999a). The core of the tourist experience is authenticity (MacCannell, 1973), but it is limited by being less sophisticated and knowledgeable (Cohen, 1988); what tourists experienced is symbolic authenticity and is an authenticity in the context of the “real environment.” In contrast, this type of authenticity is constructed by the multistakeholder being able to fulfill tourists’ need of experience. This study argues, from the tourists’ perspective, commercialization can meet tourists’ objective for pursuing all types of experience symbols, and will promote tourists’ experience quality under the current market criteria of Chinese Tourism (Yang, 2011). It is worth noting that tourists’ judgment for “what is an authentic experience” will be more comprehensive with the growth of travel awareness and experiences. Therefore, the control of tourism commercialization to a certain extent is necessary to guarantee tourists’ experience quality.

Managerial Implications

When the degree of tourism commercialization in destination is increased, tourists’ experience quality and satisfaction will improve also. The managers should realize that commercialization is a necessary supplement to tourism products, and tourism commercialization should be developed under certain control. Taking into account the characteristics of ethnic culture and tourism exhibition, the tourism planners need to develop various types of sign products to meet tourists’ experience demand, such as cultural performances, and so on. In addition, managers should further optimize the social environment in ethnic villages to provide a good experience environment for tourists, such as establishing early warning lines for the maximum carrying capacity and reinforcing management for the visual scenery.

Limitations and Future Research

This research has some limitations. First, the proposed hypothetical model was tested with samples of Chinese tourists, but research results may not be generalizable to inbound tourists. Therefore, future research is needed to replicate the study for foreign visitors to China to validate the effects of tourism commercialization on other constructs. Second, tourism commercialization is a dynamic process of evolution, and every stage has particular characteristics. Additionally, the commercialization phenomenon under different stages may lead to different effects on visitors’ experience and consumer behavior. Therefore, further research should study tourists’ experience in the different stages of the commercialization phenomenon. Third, according to the discussion, authenticity perceived by tourists in sightseeing destinations can influence tourist’ experience quality. In other words, different types of authenticity may have a moderator effect between tourism commercialization and experience quality. Therefore, further research should study this effect in empirical and analyze its theoretical mechanism.

Footnotes

Xiaolong Sun (e-mail: lolsxl@qq.com) is a lecturer at the Guizhou Normal University. Bishu Lin (e-mail: bishu123lin@sina.com) is a director in the Center for Master of Tourism Administration at Xiamen University. Yonghong Chen (e-mail: chenyonghong65@163.com) is a professor in the School of International Tourism & Culture at Guizhou Normal University. Shuyin Tseng (e-mail: stg@ydu.edu.tw) is currently a PhD student at Xiamen University in China. Jie Gao (e-mail: 42865929@qq.com) is an assistant professor in the School of Geography & Tourism at Guizhou Normal College.

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