Exploring Tourist Emotional Experiences within a UNESCO Geo-park

The paper explores emotions as the backbone of satisfactory tourists experience by investigating visitors of a UNESCO geo-park, located in Italy, in which ecomuseum and tourist facilities are offered. The study aims to provide empirical insights to determine emotional associations tourists attach to cultural and community-based destinations. The methodology is based on a quantitative approach and a survey analysis, through a questionnaire administrated in situ, has been realized. The questionnaire is grouped into four main categories addressed to explore multi-dimensional aspect of emotions, as followings: 1) sociodemographic profile of visitors and visit characteristics; 2) emotional dimensions related to joy, love and surprise; 3) hedonism, novelty, social interaction, involvement and impressions on local community dimensions, and 4) overall visitor satisfaction. Beyond descriptive statistics analysis, the methods are a confirmatory factor analysis in order to test validity and reliability of our multi-model, and an asymmetry and kurtosis analysis aimed to identify the main variables which had strong impacts to determine highest level of emotional satisfaction. The main findings show that these variables are heterogenic and belong to a mix of emotional, hedonistic, local culture and place attachment’ items. Although the present study is still a work in progress, it show the importance of emotions in the visitors experience within an UNESCO Geo-park and this outcome should be taken in consideration by managers when designing and planning their business for an ecomuseum.