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Although the impact of perceived cultural distance on tourists' behavioral intention has attracted great attention from tourism academic circles, relevant research conclusions are inconsistent and the action mechanism is unclear. Based on the theoretical framework of "cognitive-affective-conative" and by introducing the theory of travel career pattern, this study constructs a research model that includes Tourists' Perceived Cultural Distance (TPCD), perceived novelty, perceived cultural risk, cultural experience intention, and tourism experience. Taking two typical ethnic cultural heritage tourist destinations as case sites, a total of 705 valid questionnaires were collected. Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) tools were used to examine the path, mediation effect, and moderation effect of the structural model. There were three significant findings. First, TPCD positively affects perceived novelty and perceived cultural risks, and perceived novelty positively influences cultural experience intention, while perceived cultural risks negatively affect cultural experience intention. Second, perceived novelty and cultural risk play an intermediary role in the process of TPCD's influence on cultural experience intention, verifying the scientificity and applicability of the "cognitive-affective-conative" theoretical framework. Third, tourism experience negatively regulates the positive impact of TPCD on perceived cultural risk, and the moderating effect of TPCD on the positive impact of perceived novelty is not significant, thus demonstrating that tourism experience is insufficient to influence the relationship between TPCD and perceived novelty. The research has found a more reasonable explanation mechanism for the inconsistent conclusions of the simple attribution study of cultural distance-tourist behavior, exploring the complex psychological mechanism of the influence of TPCD on cultural experience intention. This article explains the hypothetical path from three standpoints: the cognitive, affective, and conative stages. It verifies the important mediating role of perceived novelty and cultural risk, and the moderating effect of tourism experience based on the theory of travel career pattern. In addition, a unique contribution of this paper is that it breaks through the limitations of previous similar studies in terms of research subjects. Most of the existing studies have been conducted on transnational tourists in international tourism scenarios, while our study finds that cultural distance has an equally significant effect on travelers' behavioral intentions in ethnic tourism contexts within the same country. |
