Tourist value co-creation behavior in immersive cultural tourism spaces: a case study of “the longest day in chang’an”

Introduction: Under the backdrop of continuous technological advancement and growing demands for tourist experiences, immersive cultural tourism spaces not only respond to the market need for profound engagement but also serve as crucial drivers for high-quality development in cultural industries. Methods: Taking "The Longest Day in Chang'an" as a case, this research constructs a "sense of immersion → emotional arousal → tourist value co-creation behavior" chain mediation model based on the Cognition-Affect-Behavior (CAB) framework and cognitive appraisal theory, with destination familiarity introduced as a moderating variable to elucidate the mechanisms of immersion's impact on tourist value co-creation behavior. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used for empirical analysis. Results: The findings reveal that: (1) Immersion exerts a significantly positive influence on emotional arousal; (2) Emotional arousal partially mediates the relationship between immersion and tourist participation behavior, while fully mediating the connection between immersion and tourist citizenship behavior; (3) Destination familiarity demonstrates a significant negative moderating effect on the "immersion → tourist citizenship behavior" pathway. Discussion: These conclusions provide theoretical insights for fostering tourist value co-creation behaviors and offer managerial implications for the governance of immersive cultural tourism spaces.