Historical empathy: A key driver of visitor cultural attitudes at heritage destinations

Historical empathy is regarded as an essential ability that allows for a comprehensive understanding of history. Tourism research suggests that it could have a significant impact on tourists' experiences and attitudes as well. Given the scarcity of appropriate tools for measuring historical empathy, particularly in tourism contexts, this study firstly employed the scale-development process to develop a tourist historical empathy scale that includes historical imagination, historical contextualization, reflection, and affective connection. Then, a model that integrates tourist engagement, historical empathy, and cultural attitudes was proposed to explore the interrelationships among the constructs. The analysis of 444 valid questionnaire responses revealed that, while engagement can affect all dimensions of historical empathy, it can only influence tourists' cultural attitudes through the full mediation role of reflection and affective connections. This study advances understanding of tourists’ historical empathy, reveals the internal mechanism from social interaction to attitudes within the social constructivism theory.