Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Cottrell, Catherine

Area of Concentration

Economics and Psychology

Abstract

Ethnic tourism instigates a reflexive relationship between tourists and host groups that blurs the lines between hospitality and economic exchange. Research in tourism has demonstrated that perceived authenticity is positively related to tourist satisfaction and the amount paid for a touristic experience. This relationship has been suggested as a contributing factor towards host groups advertising images of themselves that cater to touristic perceptions of authenticity. Through the use of representativeness heuristics and prototype theory, this study explores consumer decision making in the context of ethnic tourism. It improves an understanding of the cognitive underpinnings that help construct perceived authenticity in ethnic tourism. Participants were 271 respondents from Amazon Mechanical Turk who read a description of an ethnic tourism experience that varied across four levels of prototypicality. These participants then completed measures of perceived authenticity of the experience, satisfaction with the experience, and price they would pay for the experience. It was found that, when hosts presented characteristics closer to a cognitive prototype of an ethnic group, perceived authenticity of the tourism experience increased. When hosts presented characteristics that were actively non-prototypical, perceived authenticity and the amount that participants were willing to pay for the experience decreased. These results indicate that specific characteristics of host group representation influence tourist perceptions in ways that could have implications for host group autonomy over group image.

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