KJC Korea
Journal Central

Augmented reality (AR) acceptance depends on the characteristic and background of a traveler and experiential characteristics of an AR application. This study aims to understand the configurations of the two types of travel motivations and four factors of the experience suggested by Pine and Gilmore on tourist’s AR satisfaction and willingness to pay on AR. The data are collected through an experiment using an AR of Casa Batlló in Barcelona, Spain, which is one of the most successful case as an exemplary. A total of 56 data analyzed using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, four patterns show high AR satisfaction, and two patterns show high willingness to pay for AR. In particular, education was found to be the most important experience economy factor for high AR satisfaction and willingness to pay. Passive participation (entertainment + aesthetics) was also found to be an predictor of AR satisfaction and willingness to pay. Results of this study suggest that, when designing AR content with high satisfaction and willingness to pay, creating educational content is the most important, but user participation should be induced while considering entertainment and aesthetics. In addition, it was found that the core experience economy factors influencing the willingness to pay for AR differ in accordance with the motivation of a tourist. This finding suggests a need for a personalized AR service strategy that fits the travel motivation of a tourist.

With the global spread of COVID-19, there have been constraints on tourism behavior, which are increasing the negative emotion of tourists. To recover from this negativity, tourists are pursuing domestic nature-based travel as much as possible in the current situation. This study aims to empirically confirm whether natural tourist destinations have the effect on helping tourist recover from COVID-inspired negativity and if perceived happiness is enhanced for those who traveled to natural tourists destination during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. In order to test the hypothesized model, data were collected from an online survey from September 5th to September 19th. A total of 742 of 845 responses were used for empirical analysis. The results of the study are as follows. First, it was found that physical risk perception did not affect perceived restorative environment, while psychological risk perception and socio-environmental risk perception had an impact on perceived restorative environment. Second, it was found that the perceived restorative environment had an impact on perceived attention restoration. Third, it was found that the perceived attention restoration had an impact on travel happiness (subjective well-being). This study is meaningful in that it theoretically verified the importance and positive role of domestic nature-based tourist destinations in a psychologically negative state. Based on the results of the study, natural tourism destination development directions were proposed for tourism business corporales and public institutions.

The tourism industry faced a turning point due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examined potential tourists' behavior change during the pandemic. In-depth interviews with 14 potential tourists who planned to travel abroad in 2020 but delayed their plans were conducted. The collected data was analyzed using NVivo 12. Coding of the interview data resulted in 143 concepts and 31 sub-categories divided into nine categories. To be specific, the causal condition was the “outbreak of the pandemic.” The contextual conditions included “social distancing” and “travel alert.” The phenomenon was “limited tourist activity.” The intervening conditions were “tourism nostalgia”, “need for tourism”, and “perceived risk.” The actions/interactions included “tourism response behavior in the pandemic.” The consequence was “changes in tourism behavior.” In the selective coding stage, the core category was found to be “change in tourism behavior according to tourist responses in the pandemic.” The results provide a theoretical framework for understanding the psychological mechanisms and behaviors of potential tourists in the pandemic. Moreover, new factors related to changes in the tourism behavior of potential tourists. The study confirms recent research findings that the psychological mechanisms of tourists are an even greater influence than the pandemic itself. This study contributes in-depth understanding of the perceptions, attitudes, behaviors, and reactions of potential tourists in the pandemic situation, which was previously insufficiently explored.