Visitor Motivation and Experience with an Imitation Destination: Kobe Chinatown

Bình Nghiêm-Phú ()
Additional contact information
Bình Nghiêm-Phú: School of Economics and Management, University of Hyogo, 8-2-1 Gakuen-Nishimachi, Nishi-ku, Kobe 651-2197, Hyogo, Japan

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 13, 1-12

Abstract: Visitor motivation and experience are essential concepts for both tourism researchers and practitioners. However, there is a structural difference between motivation and experience. How visitor motivation and experience interact and influence visitor satisfaction remains unknown. This study addressed these topics by investigating visitors to Kobe Chinatown, an imitation tourist spot in East Japan. The study collected the answers from 210 online and onsite participants via a structured questionnaire (April–November 2024). The outcomes showed that one motivation factor (interpersonal seeking) was significantly associated with two experience factors (cognitive: β = 0.279, p = 0.003 and affective: β = 0.660, p = 0.000); however, the prior literature review of research on imitation destinations suggested that two other motivation factors (personal escaping and personal seeking) would also be present in the association. In addition, this study also identified that both experience factors significantly predicted visitor satisfaction (cognitive: β = 0.482, p = 0.000 and affective: β = 0.340, p = 0.005) while motivation did not. The issue with the conceptualization of motivation and the essentiality of experience was discussed based on these observations. Implications for sustaining and promoting imitation destinations were also generated.

Keywords: imitation destination; motivation; experience; Chinatown (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/13/6032/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/13/6032/ (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:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:13:p:6032-:d:1692225

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

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