Abstract

Perceived quality was identified an important antecedent of tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty, however, few studies examine the factors influencing tourist’s perception on the service quality of a destination. For historic and cultural tourists, tourist experience play an important role during their visits. The main purpose of this study was to investigate whether tourists’ experience influenced perceived quality of the tourist as an antecedent and the moderating effect of tourists’ motivation on the relationship between tourists’ experience and perceived quality within historic and cultural tourism contexts. A survey of 1,389 tourists visited an ancient town in center part of China, Sheqi, was conducted as the basis for analysis. With SPSS 22.0 and data collected in Sheqi Ancient Town, the hypothetical model was tested by the method of hierarchical regression analysis. The empirical results indicated that, firstly, the tourists’ experience positively influenced perceived quality significantly. Secondly, tourist motivation played a significant moderating role on the relationship between tourist’s experience and perceived quality.

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