Tourist Value Co-Creation Through Hedonic and Utilitarian Features in the Saudi case: Relational Trust, Service Innovation, and Smart Technology Adoption as Driving Factors

The integration of travellers and their interactivity in order to facilitate their integration into the smart community is currently an important lever to strengthen the tourism industry. Despite the crucial role played by hedonic and utilitarian features in tourist value co-creation (TVC), the mechanisms between the two components remain insufficiently documented. The current research provides insights into the value co-creation process in the tourism industry through the direct impacts of hedonic and utilitarian features and the mediating effects of relational trust (RT), tourism service innovation (TSI) and smart technology adoption (STA). The research focused on perceived ease of use (PEU), perceived usefulness (PU), and attitudes towards using technology as main dimensions of smart technology adoption. We applied the Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) in the case of 374 tourists visiting Saudi Arabia and after having operated the appropriate pilot test addressed to hotel managers in smart tourism. Our results revealed that hedonic and utilitarian features significantly and positively affect the TVC directly and through the mediating effects exerted by both relational trust and tourist service innovation. Unlike the perceived usefulness and attitude towards using technology which significantly mediate the relationship between hedonic and utilitarian features, and TVC, the dimension specific to smart technology adoption and relative to perceived ease of use does not play any mediating role. The study outcomes serve tourism industry managers, practitioners, and policymakers by proposing a comprehensive value co-creation model integrating key mediating factors of success on the behavioral, socio-psychological, and technical levels.