1. Introduction
An enduring lack of social exposure and scholarly attention to intangible cultural heritage (ICH) has resulted in losses of government and community property due to ICH destruction. However, the inclusion of cultural practices and expressions of intangible heritage on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO’s) Convention’s Lists has recently drastically improved the survival status of ICH, and associated tourism has begun to attract researchers’ interest [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10]. Tourism development has promoted the safeguarding and development of ICH to a certain extent, with some governments beginning to turn to ICH as a steady source of income. Many heritage sites have created tourism products in the name of restoring ICH, which may violate the authenticity of heritage itself, and poses a risk of over-commercialization. Academics are currently most interested in the preservation and safeguarding of ICH craftsmanship and aesthetics. Therefore, the question of how to vitalize ICH tourism warrants discussion. In terms of the sustainable development of ICH tourism, it is necessary to find a balance between ICH and non-heritage tourism development, where related tourism products reflect value while meeting tourists’ emotional needs. ICH value can thus become a focus of product development [
11]. Meanwhile, residents—who play essential roles in ICH promotion—can improve the quality of ICH products through their cognition, attitudes and tourism intentions.
Under this background, this paper examines the relationship between residents’ value cognition around ICH tourism, and the formation of tourism intentions to promote sustainable ICH tourism development. Most research on tourist destinations has naturally focused on tourists; however, the invisibility, portability and complexity of ICH require visitors to spend more energy, money and time on understanding the connotations of ICH. Accordingly, to improve the accuracy of relevant research, residents from a local heritage city and neighboring areas with the same type of ICH were selected as respondents. This research project consists of two main steps: First, we reconstruct the ICH value system to study residents’ ICH-related value cognition; and second, we delineate the formation mechanism behind residents’ tourism intentions within a value cognition–emotional attitude–tourism intentional framework. Our findings contribute to tourism theory and practice. Theoretically, this study redefines the value cognition system and integrates it with tourism intention, offering a new starting point for the study of tourism behavior. Additionally, by applying problem-solving strategies on the basis of cognition [
12] and the value–attitude–behavior model [
13] to ICH tourism, the processes underlying tourism intention are clarified using established theories. From a practical standpoint, ICH tourism products based upon residents’ value judgments are more connotative and aligned with residents’ preferences. Combining such products with residents’ attitudes and behavioral intentions can better promote the sustainable development of ICH tourism. Furthermore, ICH research can provide useful insight for tourism and other economic fields; such knowledge can then be translated into popular educational tools for residents, thus providing spiritual inspiration. We chose a form of ceramic art, namely the traditional firing technology of Longquan celadon (TFTLC), as our research object, and used questionnaires to gather relevant information from residents of the local city and a neighboring city that shared the same type of ICH.
2. Literature Review
The first ICH-related document was drafted in 1971, followed by the establishment of the first international normative instrument on the safeguarding of traditional culture and folklore in 1989, and a new program on ’Intangible Cultural Heritage’. UNESCO finally adopted the International Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (i.e., the Convention) in 2003 [
14]. UNESCO offers a comprehensive definition of ICH that encompasses oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals and festival events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe, or knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts inherited from one’s ancestors and passed on to one’s descendants. Consensus around the safeguarding of ICH has led to many studies regarding its identification, protection and inheritance [
1,
2,
3,
7,
8,
9]. Scholars have recently integrated ICH protection with the development of digital communications in an attempt to present ICH via social media or other network practices [
6,
10,
15]. The sustainable development of ICH tourism has also gradually captured scholars’ attention [
4,
5].
In the context of ICH tourism development, value can serve as a focal point in guiding decision making [
11]. The World Tourism Organization’s (UNWTO’s) first study on tourism and ICH proposed that ICH assets can be developed as tourism products using several approaches. Examples include: Creating cultural spaces or purpose-built facilities as venues to exhibit cultural heritage, merging or bundling tourist attractions to create themed sets to enhance appeal, developing new tourism routes or heritage networks, using existing circuits or reviving heritage networks, such as pilgrimage routes, and/or using or reviving festivals and events [
16]. These products imbue tangible objects with core cultural values, therefore benefiting host communities and meeting tourists’ needs while offering education and entertainment. Some researchers have suggested that the outstanding universal value of heritage should be maintained in world heritage conservation planning [
17]. Understanding the value of ICH in tourism development requires urgent attention, and inspired this study.
Much of the research on ICH tourism has taken community residents in heritage sites as the primary subjects [
4,
5]. Besides ICH, many scholars have emphasized interactions between local communities and heritage sites. According to these studies, residents’ attitudes and perceptions are important for the sustainable development of heritage tourism; structural equation modeling (SEM) has often been adopted to identify correlations between these factors [
18,
19,
20,
21,
22]. In terms of tourism development in heritage sites, residents seem to offer greater contributions than tourists. Community participation in heritage site governance can increase trust and public consensus, reveal tourism strategies to meet local needs, and contribute to destination sustainability [
18]. Our study thus has a robust theoretical basis for taking residents as the research object.
In accordance with most ICH research, our literature review begins by exploring residents’ cognition of ICH value, and next considers the relationship between ICH value and tourism intention, the impacts of emotional attitudes on behavior and the path of value cognition–emotional attitude–tourism intention. We then put forth our research hypotheses and design questionnaires to present a systematic study of the sustainable development of ICH tourism.
2.1. ICH Value and Tourism Intention
As ICH relies on tangible carriers to transform tourism resources into products, most scholars have focused on tangible places (e.g., heritage sites and museums) when studying heritage tourism. Similarly, products are closely related to ‘places’. Existential tourism has made it possible to unveil identity sources dissociated with local places, which can link authenticity with the original spirit of a place [
23]. Therefore it is logical to study tourism development by discussing the value of ICH.
Some scholars consider value the most abstract social cognition, which spurs attitude and behavior. Homer and Kahle [
13] proposed the value–attitude–behavior (VAB) hierarchy and applied it to the study of natural foods’ consumption. The value scale associated with the VAB hierarchy is divided into extrinsic and intrinsic value, derived from two schools of axiological thought in philosophy, which are, objectivity doctrines and subjectivity doctrines. Objectivity doctrines posit that the world exists in itself. Conversely, subjective theories hold that reality exists in knowers’ perceptions and intellections, such that reality is relative rather than absolute. External values are hence based on the knowledge of an object, such as a goal experience or situation; internal values refer to expectation-oriented intentions that are internally directed. Internal and external values both exert significant positive effects on tourism intention [
24]. Although VAB and corresponding value dimension theories have been widely used in research on behavioral patterns in ecological behavior, tourism destinations and other areas [
25,
26], the value of tourism products cannot be described solely on the basis of internal and external value.
Williams and Soutar’s [
27] view differs from the belief that value is analogous to social cognition in the VAB hierarchy; they contended that value is a personal perception, and perceived value has a significant positive influence on behavioral intention. According to Williams and Soutar’s [
27] study of value, satisfaction and behavioral intentions in an adventure tourism context, identified value dimensions include functional value, value for money, emotional value, social value and novelty value. These propositions are more in line with the times than prior value dimensions, and hence more suitable for tourism research. Other scholars also agreed that value is based on personal perceptions under the influence of culture. Therefore, Williams and Soutar’s [
27] designed scales were also used in other research. Some scholars [
28,
29,
30] continue to support the view that “value is social cognition”, and their scales are more specific. For example, Kim and Thapa [
29] incorporated quality, emotional, price and social value in a study of nature-based tourism. Hapsari [
30] believed that value can explain consumer behavior such as purchase intention, and thus employed educational value to explore tourist loyalty in educational theme parks.
Conceptually, cognition refers to an information-processing view of an individual’s psychological functions, of which perception is a part [
31]. However, in research involving the ‘value perception’ perspective, the dimensions used to assess value are more specific than in work that focuses on ‘value cognition’.
Overall, tourism researchers should consider value in a broader sense [
27], and more accurate terms should be applied when discussing heritage-related values (e.g., beliefs and interests, ideas and ideologies) [
9]. In this paper, we take tourists’ cognition of the value of ICH as a starting point, and then summarize historical, social, economic, aesthetic, educational and other values of TFTLC based on a review of the literature to build a foundation for ongoing tourism development.
2.2. Effects of Emotion on Behavior
Many studies have confirmed that emotional experiences influence tourists’ decisions in various ways [
32,
33]. For example, emotions can shape individuals’ tourism motivations and chosen destinations or tourism products [
34,
35]. In the consumption stage, tourists’ emotions often change over the course of a trip [
36]. In later stages of consumption, visitors’ emotions and affect can influence their tourism consumption satisfaction, destination attachment and loyalty [
37,
38,
39]. Scholars have discussed diverse ways to evaluate emotions. For example, Prayag and et al. [
40] noted that the psychology literature tends to espouse two main theoretical approaches: dimensional (valence-based) and categorical (emotion-specificity). The dimensional approach applies labels such as positive–negative and pleasure–awakening to conceptualize emotions, whereas the categorical approach frames emotions using various states, such as pleasure, happiness and excitement or fear, regret and disappointment. In a study of tourists’ emotional experiences, Rahmani and colleagues [
41] applied Plutchik’s [
42] theory of psychoevolutionary synthesis wherein emotions are divided into eight categories: anticipation, joy, sadness, anger, fear, trust, disgust and surprise. The concept of place attachment has also been used to examine how positive emotions and cognitive connections inform travelers’ destination loyalty [
39].
Attitude is generally understood as an evaluative judgment about a given object, which can be favorable, unfavorable, or neutral [
43]. Judgments can change following an exposure to information and serve as a determinant of intention [
44]. Scholars have also used numerous scales to measure attitudes. For example, Manca and Fornara [
45] employed bipolar scales to measure respondents’ attitudes based on the following adjectives: good–bad, appropriate–inappropriate, right–wrong, pleasant–unpleasant, boring–funny, harmful–beneficial and useful–useless. Prajitmutita and his co-authors [
46] used satisfaction to measure customers’ attitudes towards a product or service based on their degree of pleasure and fulfilment.
Although emotion and attitude have been defined uniquely in various studies, the correlation between these constructs is complex; no uniform classification or indicators thereof have been proposed to determine these constructs’ influences upon tourists’ behavior. Some authors [
47] have found that people with greater emotional well-being are more likely to express positive attitudes towards purchasing sustainable products. Other researchers [
48] have found that emotion has a positive influence on tourism attitude, whereas attitude has a partial mediating effect on emotion. Respondents may use a series of positive, negative, or mixed emotional words to express their attitudes towards value perceptions of tourism products during interviews [
49]. Therefore, in this study, we combined emotion with attitude to create the notion of ‘emotional attitude’, which represents residents’ attitudes towards ICH with respect to emotions. ‘Emotional attitude’ is measured using ‘Unpleasant–Pleasant’ and ‘Boring–Arousing’ as indicators, echoing the anchors used in previous studies to measure emotion and attitude.
2.3. The Path of Value Cognition–Emotional Attitude–Tourism Intention
The concept of cognition, as used in tourism research, refers to tourists’ responses to mass information in the external tourism environment, and alludes to their future expectations to a certain extent [
50]. Before Homer and Kahle [
13] proposed the VAB hierarchy, Newell and Simon [
12] characterized cognition in information processing in terms of how the human brain handles information, laying the foundation for the cognition–attitude–behavior model (CAB). Mehrabian and Russell [
51] proposed the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model shortly thereafter, in which S denotes environmental stimuli, O denotes the emotional responses of arousal, pleasure and dominance and R denotes consumer behavior.
Later, Donovan and Rossiter [
52] further validated and modified the SOR model, contending that consumers exhibit two primary emotional states (i.e., pleasure and arousal), which are significant mediators of intended shopping behaviors within a store.
Since then, many studies have confirmed the relationships between cognition, emotion and behavior, or between cognition, attitude and behavior. For instance, Smith and Sherman [
53] conducted a study on store image and mood using the SOR framework, and identified associations between customers’ cognition, attitudes and behavior. Eroglu, Machleit and Davis [
54] identified atmospheric cues in online stores that can influence shoppers’ emotions, cognitive states and ultimate shopping outcomes. Billiot and Rodriguez [
55] noted that cognitive flexibility theory explained how, after consumers have acquired and transferred knowledge, they are inspired to put such knowledge into practice. The authors also used cognitive flexibility theory to study parents’ cognition, attitudes and behavior under the influence of hypermedia and hypertext when allowing their children to participate in football games [
55]. Kaplan and Prato [
56] reviewed cognition, emotions and overt behavior associated with cyclists and motorists sharing the road. Given the similarity between emotion and attitude, in this study, we use the term ‘emotional attitude’ to represent residents’ pleasure and arousal. The cognition–emotion–behavior hierarchy and CAB model have been widely applied in consumer behavior research, and are feasible for studies of tourism intention as well.
A discussion of the relationship between ICH value and tourism intention, the effects of emotional attitudes on behavior, and the path of value cognition–emotional attitude–tourism, ground our research framework. The preceding literature review confirms the potential of assessing ICH tourism intention by taking residents’ value cognition as the starting point, and their attitudes as a supplement.
5. Discussion and Implications
Tourism development is an essential means of vitalizing ICH. Although such development can improve the living status of ICH, many ICHs suffer from over-commercialization, which can compromise their authenticity and shift them away from their intended value. The design, marketing and evaluation of ICH products are essential to ICH sustainability. Therefore, TFTLC was taken as the focal ICH in this research, given its potential to be developed into popular tourism products, similar to other forms of traditional craftsmanship.
Value and value orientation are frequently mentioned in relation to sustainability. Understanding people’s value orientations is crucial when organizing sustainable activities. Value orientation is also related to attitudes, describing dispositional weights and predicting behavioral intention [
47,
63,
64]. Among value orientations, a set of linked propositions including value and existential elements can influence individuals’ general patterns, decisions and belief intensity about outdoor recreation activities [
65]. In particular, value cognition is an essential component of value orientation that evokes tourism intention. Heritage undoubtedly offers extensive value, and the development of heritage tourism holds great promise. However, preservation (i.e., non-use) values and use values [
65], internal and external values [
24,
66], utilitarian and hedonic values [
67] and experiential values [
66] are insufficient in truly capturing the value of cultural heritage. It is more practical to consider residents’ value cognition when seeking to develop corresponding tourism products that will meet tourists’ expectations. As noted in the literature review, cognition includes perception, and value perception falls under the scope of value cognition. This conceptualization eliminates any potential redundancy of cognition and perception in our research framework.
We recruited residents from the TFTLC heritage site and a neighboring city as respondents to ensure a higher level of ICH value cognition and a more manageable workload. Residents’ cognition of the ICH value was highly objective, thereby improving the accuracy of scale analysis. Our findings from residents can also be applied to tourists, because ICH tourism differs from other types of place-specific tourism. An intangible culture can be associated with numerous places, including museums, exhibitions, or heritage sites. With regard to ICH, residents offer greater contributions than tourists, but may also become tourists visiting local heritage sites. Our findings demonstrated a significant moderate correlation between aesthetic value, educational and spiritual value, social and economic value and historical value cognition, which should be helpful in translating our results in practice.
For example, celadon is renowned for its aesthetic value, long history, creation of economic value, spiritual sustenance and use as an educational tool. Four types of value cognition are closely related and indispensable in the ICH system. In terms of structure, the ICH tourism decision-making system based on the ‘value cognition–emotional attitude–tourism intention’ path is uniquely suited to ICH tourism intention research, representing an expansion on the ‘cognition–emotion–behavior’ and ‘value–attitude–behavior’ models. In addition to four value cognitions, we redefined the meaning of emotional attitude, which was found to partially mediate the influence of value cognition on tourism intention. In these paths, aesthetic value, educational and spiritual value, social and economic value and historical value appeared to directly affect residents’ willingness to travel and indirectly influence the formation of tourism intention via emotional attitudes. These influences were positively correlated: an increase in value cognition evoked more positive emotions and thus strengthened residents’ willingness to travel, consistent with our assumptions. Also, the mediation effect of emotional attitude was even larger than the direct effect of aesthetic value on tourism intention. Accordingly, emotional attitude appears to be an indispensable aspect of research on ICH tourism intention.
From a sustainability perspective, tourism development can provide an environment and living space for ICH, generate protection funds while improving national awareness and offer a foundation for ICH inheritance. At heritage sites, ICH tourism development can propagandize local brands, enrich the content of tourism products and improve the quality of such products. However, unsustainable ICH tourism development may destroy brand effects, eliciting fierce competition and potentially compromising the business environment. These activities also fail to emphasize value, lessening the educational significance for residents and tourists. The tourism industry has become increasingly competitive, and operators need functional strategies to sustain ICH tourism development and safeguard existing sites. It is therefore necessary to carefully consider residents’ value cognition regarding ICH along with their emotional attitudes; doing so can promote a thorough evaluation of ICH resource endowments in terms of product design, marketing and tourism experience assessment. Based on our findings, we offer several recommendations to government agencies and relevant scenic areas and attractions.
ICH tourism products should be offered in a way that will satisfy visitors’ desires, namely by considering heritage characteristics along with customers’ value cognition and emotional experiences. Before creating relevant tourism products, decision makers should combine the aesthetic, historical and educational and spiritual value of ICH to construct exciting travel experiences for tourists. Tourists may express positive emotional attitudes towards value symbols and interactive areas that can inspire their imaginations around ICH, inspiring them to participate in ICH tourism. For example, when developing celadon tourism products, designers should seek to strengthen the emotional impact and integrate scientific and educational content into static and dynamic tourism products. Designers should also combine successor performance, teaching, live-action song and dance performances and museum explanations to enhance tourists’ value cognition. Offering a variety of activities could improve tourists’ perceived experiential value, boosting tourists’ intentions to return to and recommend an ICH destination [
68]. Therefore, it is essential to improve the construction of scenic spots, including physical products such as relics, sites and souvenirs to create a complete, diversified and accessible boutique ICH tourism route.
In terms of ICH tourism marketing, practitioners should highlight the spiritual connotations and inheritance-based significance of ICH. According to the tourism intention model, value is indispensable in the formation path of visitors’ willingness to travel. Therefore, in the process of ICH image creation and brand propaganda, underscoring ICH value and fostering relevant value cognition are pivotal. For example, when promoting TFTLC, a museum could display pictures and posters of celadon embryos and decorations to convey profound information about celadon craftsmanship and inheritors to visitors, thus promoting the product’s connotations. With respect to advertising design and target market research, practitioners should consider different groups’ emotional responses and cognition to create pleasing, exciting advertisements [
49].
These strategies should include factors that tourists care about, consider whether such factors can meet tourists’ emotional needs, focus on core elements of ICH tourism products, and raise tourists’ awareness of values.
As intangible assets, ICH tourism products should be evaluated after bringing them to market. Since related sites and cultural relics are nonreplicable, more empirical research is needed to improve the research model and propose suggestions to promote the sustainable development of ICH tourism. This assessment should include factors such as stakeholders, ICH value, carrying capacity, ecological sensitivity, economic transformation and tourist cognition. Tourists’ needs and the protection of ICH should also be considered in sustainable tourism development. Most importantly, operators and managers should recognize that a good ICH tourism product must be closely tied to visitors’ preferences, specifically their value cognition and emotional attitudes; doing so will help ICH tourism operators address related dilemmas by aligning relevant experiences with tourists’ needs.