A structural model of host authenticity
Introduction
As inheritors and interpreters of traditional cultural heritage, hosts are also an important presentation of traditional cultural heritage, particularly in that they are often involved in the production process of the tourism product, including making traditional handicrafts, showing their life status to tourists, and participating in various forms of tourism performance (Deng, 2010). When hosts are considered suppliers and creators of authenticity, host communities are simply treated as the object of tourists’ authentic experience (Ap, 1992, Chhabra, 2005); how hosts experience authenticity has been neglected. Getz (1998) emphasises the importance of community control and acceptance for the authenticity of events. Cole (2007) examines authenticity from a local perspective, i.e., villagers’ interpretation of the authenticity of ethnic minority areas under commercial tourism development. Steiner and Reisinger (2006) explicitly put forward the concept of host perception of authenticity, which is the opposite of tourist authenticity. Host perception of authenticity does not refer to evaluating the authenticity of hosts’ living environment and lifestyle from tourists’ perspective (tourist gaze) or customed authenticity formed in the interaction among tourists and hosts (Wang, 2007), nor does it refer to the reverse gaze (also-called second gaze or questioning gaze) of hosts back upon tourists to curtail negative impacts and redirect the tourist gaze (Chhabra, 2010). Here it means hosts as subjects perceiving the authenticity of their own culture (host gaze) rather than as objects being gazed upon by tourists.
However, some may not be able to understand host perception of authenticity; they believe that only tourists perceive authenticity and that authenticity and tourist activity are linked. As Zukin noted, “We can only see spaces as authentic from outside them. The more connected we are to its social life, especially if we grew up there, the less likely we are to call a neighbourhood authentic” (2008, p. 728). However, the concept of authenticity is not derived from tourism. “Authenticity is important but it is significant for all modern peoples, not just the category of tourists. The search for authenticity may lead people to travel but it may be found just as easily at home. Authenticity lies in connections, not in separation and distance” (Hall, 2007, p. 1140). Authenticity is a concept that derives its meaning only through the positing of its opposite. At the core of all such dualisms is a conception of boundary (Kelner, 2001). Authenticity is valuable only where there is perceived inauthenticity (Taylor, 2001). If the environment is not gradually becoming inauthentic, people would not be aware of or care for authenticity. For tourists, MacCannell (1976) makes the claim that tourists are so dissatisfied with their own culture (Chhabra, 2005) that they seek authentic experiences elsewhere and want to experience the authenticity of others. For hosts, often, it is because tourists’ very search destroys the authenticity of the tourist destination, which, before the tourists’ quest, was presumed to be pristine and untouched (Bruner, 1994). As a result, local residents living in the tourist destination become aware of judgment and focus on whether their own culture remains authentic when their distinctive traditional culture is being eroded by commodification.
Many scholars argue that tourism and the improved economic conditions have sponsored ‘cultural revivals’ in both material and non-material forms (e.g., Grünewald, 2002, Li, 2006). The commodification and marketing of ethnicity has become a powerful force for the preservation and protection of communities and the (re)construction of identities (Yang & Wall, 2009). However, commodification is a double-edged sword. A common view in the literature has followed: “tourism turns culture into a commodity, packaged and sold to tourists, resulting in a loss of authenticity” (Cole, 2007, p. 945). Homogenisation and standardisation mainly caused by tourism leave little room for individuality, so it is unlikely that mass tourism is going to be conducive to authenticity among hosts. The reason stated by Steiner and Reisinger is that “imposing alien values on host communities or applying economic pressure is also unlikely to encourage authenticity and may even force conformity among hosts” (2006, p. 310). Boorstin’s (1961) book, which concerns ‘staged events’, also states how the presence of tourists distorts and commodifies cultures, which also raises concerns about hosts’ inability to be authentic because they must pander to tourists’ expectations.
Sun (2010) note that hosts do have their own views on the interpretation of their culture by the outside world and have their own perceptions of and criteria for the authenticity of their culture. However, when the commercial packaging of tourism deviated from local culture and made it inauthentic, the hosts had no way to express their views because they were often ignored and lacked discursive rights, which are rooted in the development mechanism. From Boorstin (1961) and MacCannell (1973) onward, the issue of studying authenticity has always been with the ‘Other’ perspective, examining fringe communities, marginalised groups, and cultural change. How hosts authenticate ethnic resources lacks sufficient attention. Especially, the level and structure of host perception of authenticity is worth studying.
Section snippets
Theoretical background
There is a growing consensus (e.g., Cohen, 1988, Taylor, 2001) that authenticity is a negotiable concept depending on tourists, hosts, tourism enterprises, and the government. Each stakeholder can create their own subjective framework of what constitutes the authentic aspects of ethnic tourism (Chhabra, 2012, Xie, 2011). Because authenticity is not a “primitive given” (Cohen, 1988, p. 379) but is something that emerges in social processes, it will be more useful to analyse the stakeholders in
Personal benefits from tourism
Authenticity perception is easily influenced by other factors, such as demographic characteristics, travel motivations, and attitudes towards culture (Kolar and Zabkar, 2010, Waitt, 2000, Zhou et al., 2013). Personal benefits are directly connected with the intuitive feeling of one’s own likes and dislikes and more likely to affect subjective judgment (Ko & Stewart, 2002). Xie (2011) noted that benefits from tourism play an important role in hosts’ perception of authenticity. In the case of
Personal economic benefits from tourism
Ko and Stewart (2002) measure personal economic benefits from tourism development from two aspects, the relationship between tourism and personal jobs and the relationship between tourism and family jobs. We believe that the economic incomes of relatives and friends will bring an expectation conducive to the judgment of economic benefits from tourism. The measures include the following indicators: tourism brings me a good income (ECB1), tourism brings my family a good income (ECB2), and tourism
Discussion and implications
Before the structural analysis, we need to discuss the impact of socio-demographics to comprehend the level of host perceptions of authenticity. There is no significant difference between elderly males and females (age > 45. OBJ2, t = 0.68, p=0.50; OBJ3, t = 1.01, p=0.32; OBJ4, t = 0.49, p=0.63; EXI1, t = -0.93, p=0.36; EXI2, t = 0.86, p=0.40; EXI3, t = -0.11, p=0.91; EXI4, t = -1.47, p=0.15. Significant at p<0.05), although the role of males of this age would have changed much more dramatically (Li, 2006).
Conclusions
Authenticity is significant for all modern peoples including hosts. Host perception of authenticity of local culture has a solid philosophical foundation in a commercialised environment. Based on in-depth and detailed theoretical analysis, we dig into the connotation of host perception of authenticity. The confirmed measurement model and examined reliability and validity indicators in this paper attest that the proposed instrument validly and reliably measures the constructs in the model. This
Acknowledgement
We are grateful to the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the Ministry of Education in China for supporting our research through NSFC project (No. 41171121, No. 41301134) and Humanities and Social Sciences Project (No. 13YJC790193). We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from China Scholarship Council (award to Dr. Honglei Zhang for one year’s visiting scholar research at the Temple University).
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