Examining the Relationship between Tourism Involvement and Place Attachment

Abstract

Involvement and place attachment have received considerable study as individual concepts in leisure and tourism contexts, however their study in combination has been undertaken only recently, and almost exclusively in leisure and recreational contexts. This study extended the scope of combined examination of involvement and place attachment into tourism, using tourism experiences as the involvement attitude object and five tourism regions as the place references. Tourism involvement was conceptualised as a multidimensional construct consisting of centrality to lifestyle, attraction, self-expression, and food & wine. Place attachment was also conceptualised as a multidimensional construct consisting of place identity and place dependence. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were used to develop and test a measurement model using data from tourists attending Visitor Information Centres and tourism attractions in South Australia. A six factor measurement model was developed and found to have a reasonable fit with the data.