Virtual tourism attractiveness: dimension identification, scale development and validation

As far as the development of China's tourism industry is concerned, whether at the level of national policy or at the level of demand from both sides of the market supply, the application of virtual reality technology is actively called for. At present, although many scholars have endorsed the value of virtual tourism experience, the research results are mostly focused on the inevitable connection of ‘attitude-behaviour’, unilaterally focusing on focusing on a single technology or a single dimension, especially the impact of post-tour behaviour, and explaining the satisfaction of tourists' demand for immersive experience. However, few studies have explored the attraction and benefits of virtual tourism for tourists themselves. These studies have neglected the temporal patterns, spatial scales, and practical expressions of the experiential subject contained in the experiential value of virtual tourism. The article adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore the structure and connotation of virtual tourism attractiveness. The results of the study show that the attractiveness of virtual tourism is centred on technical attractiveness, content attractiveness, emotional attractiveness and social attractiveness, and contains 16 subcategories such as sensory fidelity, educational value, aesthetic pleasure, and sense of belonging to a community,etc. The scale has good reliability and validity. This study is conducive to destination managers to understand the value of virtual tourism experience more comprehensively and profoundly, and to provide necessary theoretical support and practical guidance for the construction of destination in-depth tourism experience based on virtual tourism attraction experience.