Abstract:
Shah Alam Kabir Pramanik, Prof. Dr. Md. Enayet Hossain, Prof. Dr. Md. Shah Azam
Various models and theories have been proposed to explain visitors’ attitude, visit intention and behavior. Taking a new approach this study has applied the theory of planned behavior to explain visit intention in context of cultural heritages tourism especially on museums. This study has aimed at exploring the antecedents of visitors’ attitude and evaluating the impact of visitors’ attitude on visit intention. A questionnaire survey method has been used with 220 visitors and response rate of 92 percent. Initially an Exploratory Factor Analysis has been directed using SPSS (Version 21).We have explored five factors archeological, motivational, cultural, aesthetic values and promotional that act as antecedents of visitors’ attitude. After that CFA was carried out to confirm the factors. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) has been used to test both the proposed model and hypothesized relationships among the constructs. This study has found archeological, motivational and cultural factors have significant impact on visitors’ attitude except the promotional and aesthetic values. It also found visit intention is strongly influenced by attitude of the visitors. The proposed model also has an acceptable fit to the data. Tourism developers, marketers, policy makers can use the findings to better understand, segment and satisfy the visitors. Therefore the findings of the study will definitely help in building customer based brand equity and customer loyalty particularly in cultural heritage tourism to gain competitive advantages as well as achieve sustainable development of the sector.
Keywords: Visitors’ Attitude, Visit Intention, Visit Intention Model, Museums, Cultural Heritages Tourism.
