Measuring the Effects of Multi-Sensory Stimuli in the Mixed Reality Environment for Tourism Value Creation

Tuominen, Pasi (2023) Measuring the Effects of Multi-Sensory Stimuli in the Mixed Reality Environment for Tourism Value Creation. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This thesis explores the impact of technology-enhanced multisensory stimuli on visitors' value judgments and behavioural intentions at tourist attractions. The study is based on the Tourism Value Framework (Smith and Colgate, 2007), which examines the influence of tourism environment and experience cues on tourist behaviour. To achieve the objective, four key areas were critically reviewed: 1) value creation in attraction-based tourism, 2) multisensory experience literature including experiencescape research, 3) immersion, and 4) mixed-reality technology (Objective 1). Primary data collection involved two research phases. The first phase included ten semistructured focus group interviews with visitors at two multisensory mixed-reality tourism locations in Finland (Objective 2). These interviews provided insights into visitors' perspectives on value formation, immersive experiences, and mixed-reality technologies. Thematic analysis of the data revealed five themes and seventeen subthemes, including context-specific subthemes, which contributed to understanding the multisensory tourism experience and technology-enhanced experience. Based on ten hypotheses, a qualitative S-I-V-A value creation framework was developed for technology-enhanced multisensory mixed reality tourism environments. The second phase aimed to examine and validate the proposed model by collecting survey responses from 317 visitors to a multisensory mixed reality tourist environment. Covariance-based Structural Equation Modelling (CB-SEM) was used for data analysis (Objective 3). The research's significant achievement is the creation of the S-I-V-A value creation framework for technology-enhanced multisensory mixed reality tourist environments, derived from the study's discoveries (Objective 4). The thesis concludes by summarizing the theoretical contributions of this research and offering recommendations to developers and designers in the tourism and mixed-reality sectors. It acknowledges the study's limitations and suggests potential directions for future research.