Visitor Happiness, Satisfaction and Authenticity Staging: An Experimental Study in Tunisian Guest Houses

This study aims to investigate the impact of congruent sensory properties on emotional and behavioral responses during an authentic tourist experience in Tunisian guesthouses. Grounded in Consumer Culture Theory and the Theory of Customer Experience, it investigates how the staging of authenticity influences guest reactions. Informed by two qualitative studies with eleven proprietors and eleven hosts, we developed an online experimental design featuring four scenarios. Data from 160 international guests revealed that happiness partially mediates the relationship between perceived authenticity and satisfaction. Furthermore, sensory congruence moderates the pathways from authenticity to happiness and from happiness to satisfaction, though not the direct authenticity-satisfaction link. This research makes several key contributions to the literature. First, it extends behavioral outcome analysis by examining satisfaction’s influence on proselytism, a construct overshadowed by word-of-mouth in experiential research. Second, it empirically addresses the underexplored mechanism of staging authenticity through specific sensory congruence. Notably, it provides the first empirical validation of happiness as a mediator in an authentic tourist experience. Finally, it advances customer experience frameworks by uniquely conceptualizing and testing sensory congruence as a moderating variable.