Does Sense of Tourism Ritual Promote Tourists’ Protection Behavior of Destination Folk Culture?

The development of ethnic tourism has promoted the wider dissemination of folk culture. As tourists become key participants in interacting with folk culture, guiding them to consciously inherit and protect this culture has become an important issue. Rituals are a significant form of cultural presentation, characterized by profound anti-structuralism, spatiality, isolation, and symbolism. This study employs a questionnaire survey method to examine the impact of the sense of tourism ritual on tourists’ perception of folk cultural value, place attachment, and behavioral intention to protect folk culture. The results show that the sense of tourism ritual influences tourists’ willingness to protect folk culture through the identification of cultural value and place attachment. This research enhances the basic theoretical framework of the sense of tourism ritual, providing effective theoretical guidance for tourism providers and destination managers, meeting tourists' higher-level spiritual needs. Additionally, it offers suggestions on how to guide tourists to consciously protect folk culture in the context of folk cultural development.