A Study on the Perception of Authenticity of Tourist Destinations and the Place Attachment of Potential Tourists—The Case of Ding Zhen’s Endorsement of Ganzi, Sichuan

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which has lasted for more than two years and significantly affected tourism, people’s yearning for better tourism has never weakened, and China’s Dual Carbon Strategy further enhanced their desire. At the end of 2020, Ding Zhen shot to stardom on the Internet because of his rugged good looks, further improving the reputation of Ganzi, Sichuan Province, and demonstrating tourists’ desire to appreciate authentic destinations. The following are worthy of research: the factors affecting tourists’ perceptions of the authenticity of destinations, the relationship between perceptions of authenticity and place attachment in potential tourists, and methods to strengthen the authenticity of a destination to enhance the place attachment of potential tourists. Taking Ganzi and Ding Zhen as the research subjects, this paper uses a co-occurrence network map analyzing the four kinds of authenticity perceived for tourist destinations, based on user-generated content, and uses the term frequency-inverse document frequency method to further calculate the weight score of factors. Finally, the paper verifies the influence of each dimension on place attachment by calculating comment sentiment scores. The results show that (1) natural landscapes, human characteristics, and preferential measures significantly impacted the perception of authenticity among potential tourists; (2) among the four kinds of authenticity perceptions, humanistic authenticity was the major promoting factor by which potential tourists formed place attachment. Based on the research results, the paper puts forward a series of suggestions to improve tourists’ emotional attachment to destinations, including creating cultural symbols of local differences, adopting preferential policies for local tickets in a timely manner, and emphasizing nature protection.