Virtual Reality Presence and Destination Behavior Intention: The Chain Mediating Effect of Emotional Response and Attitude Change

ABSTRACT This research based on the Stimulus‐Organism‐Response (SOR) theory and from the perspective of tourists' “presence”, this paper takes “Dark Ride (DR)” recreation facility in Universal Beijing Resort as the research object to analyze factors that affect tourists' production of “presence” as well as the process that “presence” generated by virtual environment affects tourists' destination behavior intention. The results show that: (1) Great quality of tourists' DR experience in virtual environment and engagement in DR recreation facility let them feel more “immersive” in DR, thereby enhancing them produce DR “presence”; (2) The DR “presence” has a positive impact on the tourist destination behavior intention. The mechanism is that tourist's DR “presence” promotes their positive destination behavior intention by triggering their emotional response and then promoting their attitude change toward the destination. The paper enriches the application research of VR in the tourism field.