Measuring Tourists’ Emotional Experiences in a cultural site

The study explores emotions and the engagement with local community as the keys of satisfactory tourists’ experience by investigating visitors of an Italian mine village, in which eco-museum and tourist facilities are offered. The methodology is based on a quantitative approach and the main method is a survey analysis, through a questionnaire administrated in situ. The study provides a confirmatory factor analysis in order to test the validity and reliability of the Destination Emotional Scale and the Memorable Tourism Experience Scale. Differently from other implementations, the main findings show that DES does not fit in this sample. However, this study shows the importance of emotions and feelings in the visitors’ experience, particularly in the hedonistic and place attachment variables within a specific cultural site.