The Moderating Role of Destination Branding Between Awareness and Value of Performing Arts and Youth Inclination to Promote Tourism

Mohammed Ali Bait Ali Sulaiman, Muzaffar Asad (), Abdelbaset Queiri, Zaroug Osman Bilal, Lujain El-Maghraby, Enrico di Bella and Sara Preti
Additional contact information
Mohammed Ali Bait Ali Sulaiman: Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, College of Commerce and Business Administration, Dhofar University, Salalah P.O. Box 211, Oman
Muzaffar Asad: Business School, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey 64700, Mexico
Abdelbaset Queiri: Department of Management, College of Commerce and Business Administration, Dhofar University, Salalah P.O. Box 211, Oman
Zaroug Osman Bilal: Department of Accounting, College of Commerce and Business Administration, Dhofar University, Salalah P.O. Box 211, Oman
Lujain El-Maghraby: Department of Management, Majan University College, Muscat 112, Oman
Enrico di Bella: Department of Political and International Sciences, University of Genoa, P.le E. Brignole 3a canc, 16126 Genoa, Italy
Sara Preti: Department of Political and International Sciences, University of Genoa, P.le E. Brignole 3a canc, 16126 Genoa, Italy

Tourism and Hospitality, 2025, vol. 6, issue 5, 1-23

Abstract: The main objective of this paper is to investigate how the interest in the value of performing arts and the awareness of the value of performing arts among local youth in Dhofar can influence their inclinations towards performing arts. Moreover, we have incorporated the perceived brand equity of the Dhofar region as a moderator in the proposed model. A structured questionnaire was administered to a sample of young residents in the Dhofar region (N = 415). The measurement instrument was developed based on the established literature concerning youth behavior, territorial branding, and the perceived value of performing arts. All items were measured using five-point Likert scales. The main theoretical constructs were operationalized as arithmetic means (composite scores) of their corresponding items: VPA (Value of Performing Arts, 9 items), APA (Awareness of Performing Arts, 10 items), YI (Youth Inclination, 11 items), and DBE (destination brand equity). Data analysis proceeded in several stages using Stata 17. The paper concludes that there is a positive and statistically significant effect of VPA on YI. Furthermore, our results confirmed that there is a positive relationship between the awareness of performing arts and youth inclination towards performing arts. Moreover, the results indicated that destination brand equity is not a significant moderator in the relationship, which means that there is no moderating effect of DBE that was confirmed on either path. This study underscores the need of preserving intangible cultural heritage by stimulating interests and developing suitable practices to make the Dhofarian youth inclined towards performing traditional arts. The findings of this study offer some policy implications to policymakers to sustain creating an interest in valuing traditional arts performance and increasing the awareness of these types of events, which are influential factors in shaping youth inclination towards performing traditional arts. The study suggests that generating awareness is vital in creating the intention among local youth to perform traditional arts. These findings suggest that policymakers provide support for traditional art performances by devising an institutional policy that provides structural support to increase interest and awareness. The paper is an original contribution as it has provided insights into how the extent of the interest in the value of performing arts and the awareness of the value of performing arts could influence the inclination of local youth to perform art activities in the Dhofar region. Secondly, this study explores whether perceived brand equity moderates this relationship.

Keywords: awareness of performing art; interest of performing arts; local youth; Oman (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z3 Z30 Z31 Z32 Z33 Z38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-5768/6/5/242/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-5768/6/5/242/ (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:jtourh:v:6:y:2025:i:5:p:242-:d:1792117

Access Statistics for this article

Tourism and Hospitality is currently edited by Mr. Philip Li

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