The Impact of Natural and Cultural Landscape Quality on Attachment to Place and the Intention to Recommend Tourism in a UNESCO World Heritage City

Dong Lv, Shukun Qin, Rui Sun (), Xuxin Jiang, Ruxia Cheng and Weimin Sun
Additional contact information
Dong Lv: School of Business Administration, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou 362021, China
Shukun Qin: School of Business Administration, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou 362021, China
Rui Sun: School of Business Administration, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou 362021, China
Xuxin Jiang: School of Business Administration, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou 362021, China
Ruxia Cheng: School of Business Administration, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou 362021, China
Weimin Sun: Independent Researcher, Quanzhou 362021, China

Land, 2025, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-33

Abstract: Cultural landscapes in World Heritage cities are attracting a growing global tourist population. Given the limitations of self-report methods in capturing tourists’ immediate and deep perceptions, and the lack of comprehensive investigation into the cultural types and naturalness of landscapes, this study aims to investigate how cultural landscape types influence tourists’ recommendation intention through the mediating roles of place attachment and perceived restorativeness while examining the moderating effect of landscape naturalness. Integrating Place Attachment Theory (PAT), Attention Restoration Theory (ART), and the Associative–Propositional Evaluation Model (APE), three studies were conducted using behavioral and neurophysiological approaches. Study 1, a scenario-based experiment, revealed that high-culture landscapes enhance recommendation intention via place attachment, with the effect of perceived restorativeness being stronger under low naturalness conditions. Study 2, an event-related potential (ERP) experiment, showed that landscapes with low culture and low naturalness elicit stronger emotional responses, as indicated by heightened P2 and LPP amplitudes. Study 3 demonstrated the efficacy of a Decision Tree model in classifying landscape naturalness based on EEG features. This study deepens the understanding of the complexity of tourist experiences in cultural heritage sites, provides new evidence for the application of Place Attachment Theory in tourism contexts, and offers scientific foundations and practical implications for optimizing landscape design in heritage sites, enhancing tourist experiences, and exploring brain–computer interface applications in the tourism field.

Keywords: cultural landscape; cultural tourism; tourist experience; scenario experiment; event-related potential (ERP); EEG machine learning; Quanzhou; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/7/1405/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/7/1405/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:14:y:2025:i:7:p:1405-:d:1694651

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().