An Exploratory Study of the Spirituality – Oriented Experiences of Tourists

Abstract

The extant literature demonstrates a gap in topics relating to spiritual and pilgrimage tourism in the
domain of “tourist experience”. This study fills the gap based on a stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R)
framework, and highlights the spiritual experience as the domain of stimulus. The organism construct,
which states the tourists’ inner states of perceptions, cognition and affection towards the stimulation, is
represented by overall image, significance of experiences, and life satisfaction. The response examines
the revisit intention of tourists. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was performed based on 170 valid
data sets, and the results support the significant functions of both cognitive and affective tourist
experiences in contributing to the formation of positive tourist impression in the spirituality-oriented
tours.