Ritualized experiences and perceived authenticity in shaping tourists’ willingness to support intangible cultural heritage inheritance

Intangible cultural heritage tourism plays an important role in cultural sustainability, yet how tourists’ experiential perceptions are associated with their willingness to support ICH inheritance remains insufficiently understood. Taking Gansu Shehuo, a representative form of Chinese folk intangible cultural heritage, as the empirical context, this study investigates how ritualized experiences and perceived authenticity are associated with tourists’willingness to support ICH inheritance.Based on 390 valid questionnaires, the study further explores both the independent effects and configurational pathways underlying tourists’ willingness to support ICH inheritance.The results show that uniqueness, ceremoniality, non-functionality, objective authenticity, and existential authenticity are significantly and positively associated with tourists’ willingness to support ICH inheritance, whereas commitment and constructive authenticity have no significant direct effects. The necessity analysis indicates that no single antecedent condition is necessary for either high or low willingness. The configurational analysis further identifies six configurations leading to high willingness and one configuration leading to low willingness, demonstrating equifinality and causal asymmetry. The findings suggest that sustainable ICH revitalization may benefit from the coordinated development of ritual distinctiveness, symbolic order, historical credibility, and lived authenticity rather than from isolated experiential attributes.