Exploring tourists' nostalgic experiences during culture festivals: the case of the Sung Chiang Battle Array

This study uses the means-end chain (MEC) approach with fuzzy conceptualization and incorporates Kano's model to elicit perceptions of nostalgic experiences and to explore preferences for Sung Chiang Battle Array (SCBA) cultural festivals. We provide a hierarchical value map that fuses attribute–consequence–value chains and Kano's model to distinguish the relationships between the factors of nostalgic experience and tourist satisfaction. Fuzzy linguistics is adopted to address the ill-defined nature of tourists' linguistic judgements so that they can be interpreted for the proposed MEC. By applying the ‘laddering' technique to interviews with 178 tourists, the resulting linkages strengthen the ability to probe outcomes and values and to derive a cognitive representation of nostalgic meanings. The findings of this research imply that, overall, tourists experience three different dominant perceptual orientations for nostalgic experiences in SCBA cultural festivals: ‘Learning and the challenge of a new experience', ‘Culture and art appreciation', and ‘The link between history and emotion'. The study's findings have implications for researchers and practitioners interested in nostalgic tourism.