Influence of Consumer Landscape on Place Attachment in Agritourism—The Case of Huatung, Taiwan

Abstract

The offerings and demand for agritourism have increased in the past four decades as farms seek to expand and diversify their income and urban dwellers pursue a slower pace during travel. Taiwan’s Huatung area organic agricultural tourism is an environmentally friendly type of tourism that has emerged in recent years, and more and more tourists are engaged in agricultural tourism. Developing the landscape resources of organic agricultural tourists to make them stand out and attract more tourists is not an easy task. This research establishes a comprehensive model to explore how the consumer landscape (LAN) affects place attachment (PAT), with attention recovery theory (ART) as a mediating variable. A quantitative questionnaire survey was conducted, and the LISREL was used as an analysis tool to verify the relationship between variables. The result shows that attention restoration substantially influences PAT, and the LAN positively affects attention restoration and PAT. In addition, this research found that the impact of LAN on PAT through attention recovery was more significant than that of LAN directly, which verified that attention recovery was an important mediating variable. The findings not only break through the theoretical gap but also provide practical suggestions for developing organic agriculture.

Keywords

• consumer landscape (LAN)
• attention restoration
• place attachment (PAT)
• agricultural tourism
• attention restoration theory (ART)