디지털 기술의 지속적인 발전에 따라 가상 관광과 디지털 문화유산 탐방은 실제 관광을 보완하는 중요한 수단으로 자리 잡고 있다. 본 연구는 기술수용모델(Technol ogy Acceptance Model, TAM)을 적용하여 인지된 용이성, 인지된 유용성, 외부 변 수 측면에서 가상 관광 체험의 성과를 살펴보고, 이러한 요인들이 사회와 온라인 환 경에서의 커뮤니케이션 효과에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지 살펴보고자 한다. 이에 본 연구는 관련 대상자와의 심층 인터뷰를 실시한 연구 결과를 보면 인지된 용이성과 인지된 유용성이 이용자의 가상 관광 체험 수용과 홍보에 영향을 미치는 주요 요인 으로 밝혀졌다. 그리고 대영박물관, 바티칸 박물관, 스미소니언 자연사 박물관, 운강석굴 등 다양한 가상 관광 플랫폼의 사례도 분석하였다. 본 연구는 가상 관광 연구 에 대해 새로운 관점을 제시하고 가상 관광을 효과적으로 설계하는 방법에 대해 의 견을 제안하였다. 또한, 문화유산 가상 관광의 전파 및 홍보를 위한 이론적인 지침과 실제적인 조언을 제시하였다.

Cultural tourism has always been recognized as the heart of the new tourism trend, and Chinese culture has received increasing attention worldwide. Cultural tourism to China delivers the values of traditional Chinese culture and provides a satisfying authentic experience for tourists. Experience is an emotional reflection of tourists’ true feelings and evaluations during the tourism process and encompasses more than the delivery of a physical product or service. Experience involves creating unique memories of destinations and is inimitable of the individual sensitivity for special events. While these creative experiences have received increasing attention from marketing scholars and various industry practitioners in general product domains, the creative experience factors of tourism systems remain unexplored. Furthermore, although the matter of experience affects tourists’ behaviors and attitudes, little is known regarding how Chinese culture affects tourists’ creative experiences, destination attachments and memories. The effects of cultural contacts and creative experiences on destination attachment and roles of satisfaction and attitudes should be considered with respect to the development of cultural and creative tourism. This study proposes cultural contact as an important enabler of destination attachment. Moreover, we examine both how and when culture contacts enhance tourists’ destination attachments by considering two critical attributes as mediators, including creative experience (i.e., Escape and Recognition, Unique Involvement, Interactivity, Peace of Mind and Learning) and cultural memories. We also considered two elements of tourists’ behaviors (satisfaction and attitude) as important contingencies. We test and integrate our concepts of a moderated mediation framework using the cultural and creative tourism from a sample of 651 tourists. We discuss how our empirical results extend Chinese culture, creative experience, and destination attachment research and provide the study’s theoretical and managerial implications.

Within marketing and consumer research, scholars have explored cross-cultural issues, and found that most of the studies are sociologically based and assume intra-cultural homogeneity in mentality and logic among people (Fatehi, Kedia & Priestly, 2015). Research has also explored how acculturation in circumstances of hyperfiliation influences cross-cultural consumption (Bradford & Sherry, 2014). The issue of particular importance within this study is the situation of cultural mixing that takes place when migrants and refugees grow their families away from their home country, and how individual and family identity values are renegotiated given ethnic ties that bind the older generation, and the non-ethnic ties in the host country and amongst the future generations. These ethnic and non-ethnic ties influence the acculturation process (Capellini & Yen, 2013) and re-acculturation process. Given increasing migration across many countries, it becomes important to understand the transcultural experiences of both refugees and migrants, as they mix with the host country’s cultural practices. We take the view that transculturality is an illustration of “the complex relationships between and within cultures today: it emphasises not isolation but intermingling, not separation but disjunctive interactions, not homogenization but heterogenization” (Jung, 2010, p.19). The intermingling of multiple cultures, inevitably has implications on consumption decisions, particularly in cases where many children have been born in the diaspora. Whilst previous studies have explored acculturation as a static and linear process (Chrikov, 2009), our study takes the view that cultural identity formation and it’s resulting cultural orientations are an ongoing, fluid, hybrid and iterative project. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to: (1) explore how cultural identity processes are negotiated by third generation UK born British Sikhs. Here, we focus on 3rd generation British Sikhs with the intention of understanding how hybrid identities emerge, and how these impact on consumption decisions; (2) explore the acculturation and re-acculturation patterns of 3rd generation British Sikhs. It is our contention that the online environment offers opportunities to explore identity projects for those born in the diaspora.