The effect of perceived environment restorative qualities on Chinese visitors' satisfaction in rural destination

Abstract

With rapid economy development and increasing social competition, the majority of Chinese people living in the city is suffering from daily work and life stress. Due to the inflexible holiday system, Chinese city people prefer visiting a rural destination around the place where they live, which is identified as restorative environment, with the demand of rest and mental replenishment. In order to investigate how perceived rural destination environment qualities influence visitor's satisfaction, this empirical study conducted a survey on 258 visitors in two rural destinations in Zhejiang province, China. SEM was utilized to analyze the relationship between variables in the proposed conceptual model and bootstrap estimation was conducted to assess the mediation effect of mental recovery between PDRQs and visitors' satisfaction in rural destinations. The results indicate: Chinese visitors' perception of compatibility and fascination significantly and directly influence their satisfaction and the perception of compatibility, mentally away and fascination have indirect influence on visitors' satisfaction with mediation of mental recovery in rural destinations.