Tourist moral behavior can effectively protect the ecological environment and cultural landscape of tourist destinations, contributing to their sustainable development. Based on social learning theory and the “Stimulus-Organism-Response” theory, this paper collects 18 qualitative interview data (Study 1) and 311 questionnaire data (Study 2), and uses a mixed-method approach to verify the differences in the impact of “experiential” moral tourism and “consequentialist” moral tourism experiences on tourists’ moral behaviors, as well as to explore the mechanism of moral experiences in “experiential” moral tourism influencing tourists’ moral behaviors. The results show that: (1) compared with traditional “consequence-based” moral tourism, “experience-based” moral tourism aligns more closely with tourists’ motivations by reflecting the characteristics of the experience economy, thus being more popular among tourists and more likely to guide tourists’ moral behaviors. (2) Positive, negative, and conflicting moral experiences all have a significant positive impact on tourists’ moral perceptions and moral behaviors, with positive moral experiences yielding the strongest effect, followed by negative moral experiences. (3) Tourists’ moral perceptions mediates the influence of moral experiences on moral behaviors. Destinations should leverage tourism's inherent “enjoyment and relaxation” nature by shifting from “emphasizing consequences” to “focusing on experiences”, and pay attention to the integration of moral experience content in the development of moral tourism products, so as to strengthen tourists’ moral experiences, enhance their moral perceptions, make their moral behaviors occur naturally.

The spiritual and emotional experiences in tourism activities are becoming increasingly important. These two aspects are not mutually exclusive but rather interactively connected and dynamically coupled. By exploring concepts of spirits, spirituality, spiritual experiences, emotions, emotional experiences, and tourist emotions, this study constructs a relational approach to the connection between spiritual experiences and emotional experiences. Research findings include: (1) the relationship between spiritual and emotional experiences progresses in depth, i.e. from “sensory perception” to “emotional comprehension” and then to “spiritual insight” and finally culminating in “life transformation”. (2) Spiritual and emotional experiences are interconnected, sharing commonalities while exhibiting distinct characteristics. Emotional fulfillment caters to tourists’ preferences, whereas spiritual guidance embodies values, representing the sublimation of emotional experiences. Both emotional fulfillment and spiritual guidance converge toward the core objective of life enrichment. (3) The interactive mechanism between spiritual and emotional experiences is a dynamic process of “environmental perception—emotional resonance—spiritual elevation”. Tourists gain a sense of life's meaning through tourism experiences. (4) Future research should focus more on the interactive connections, influencing mechanisms, and theoretical frameworks between spirituality and emotions of tourism experiences, and new pathways for tourism development should be innovated and applied to the development of cultural tourism resources. By constructing a relational approach to spirituality and emotions, this study addresses existing theoretical gaps in understanding interactive mechanisms between spirituality and emotions. It provides theoretical foundations and practical guidance for deepening the essence of tourism experiences and developing products that meet tourists' profound needs.

Value co-creation behaviors serve as an important way to enhance tourist experience quality. Using Xi’an city as a case study, based on the embodied cognition theory and the cognition-affect-behavior theory, and by deepening the connotation of the concept of tourist experience quality and developing scales, this study analyzes the interactive mechanism between tourists’ value co-creation behaviors and tourist experience quality. Key findings include: (1) tourist experience quality is tourists’ retrospective evaluation of the embodied experience in three dimensions, including technical experience quality, environmental experience quality, and functional experience quality. (2) Tourists’ pre-trip and mid-trip value co-creation behaviors significantly exert positive effect on tourist experience quality, which in turn significantly exerts positive effect on post-trip value co-creation behaviors; furthermore, tourists’ pre-trip and mid-trip value co-creation behaviors exert positive effects on post-trip value co-creation behaviors through technical and environmental dimensions. (3) The cyclical embodied experience system formed through the interaction between tourists’ value co-creation behaviors and tourist experiences is the root cause for tourists’ value co-creation behaviors to improve the overall tourist experience quality of the destination.

With their visual immediacy and efficiency, short videos have increasingly become an important channel for the public to access information. This study selects twenty highly popular travel short videos on the Douyin platform and collects 4 540 viewer comments as its data. Drawing on emotional contagion theory and employing text analysis methods, together with tools such as the PyLDAvis model, ROST CM6 software, and the SnowNLP model, the study investigates the pathways of positive emotional contagion among viewers and the mechanisms through which positive emotions influence viewers’ travel intentions and travel decision-making. The results indicate that: (1) positive emotional contagion follows two pathways: primary emotional contagion arising from interactions with short videos, and secondary emotional contagion driven by social sharing. (2) based on positive emotional contagion, viewers initiate a five-stage travel decision-making process comprising “cognitive interpretation-itinerary planning-travel expectation-emotional resonance-social dissemination”. (3) positive emotional contagion influences travel decision-making through four mechanisms: positive emotions emerging from mirroring experiences that deepen destination image and viewers’ sense of psychological belonging; positive emotions enhancing immersion and dependence, prompting viewers to seek solace in digital spaces; positive emotions triggering self-projection and collective referencing, thereby facilitating the co-construction of symbolic meanings; and positive emotions driving short-video consumption, enabling broad dissemination of destination images. (4) positive emotional contagion further motivates viewers to participate in the production of travel-related short videos through their travel behaviors, thus forming a closed loop with short-video consumption. The study expands the theoretical applicability of emotional contagion theory, destination image theory, and the “encoding-decoding” framework within the context of digital-media tourism study. In practice, it proposes three strategies for optimizing the development of the tourism market in the new era: improving short-video operation strategies, addressing and transforming non-positive emotions, and leveraging emotion-driven marketing.

Tourist loyalty is of vital importance for the sustainable development of industrial tourism, which is now an important path for urban renewal and culture-tourism integration. Using the typical industrial tourist attraction Hechai 1972 Culture and Creativity Industry Park as a case study, based on improved Chinese Customer Satisfaction Index (CCSI) theory, and by employing the structural equation model, this paper analyzes the tourist loyalty driving mechanism. The results show that: (1) tourist expectations, a key factor affecting industrial tourists’ experiences before visit, not only indirectly affect perceived value and satisfaction through improving perceived quality, but also have a direct effect on both perceived value and satisfaction. Among the components of tourist expectations, consumption expectations and industrial cultural experience expectations have a higher influence intensity than landscape expectations. (2) Perceived quality is key to driving perceived value, among the two pathways through which visitor expectations influence satisfaction, the pathway mediated by perceived quality exhibits more pronounced effects, forming the core mechanism by which expectations translate into satisfaction. Within visitor perceived quality, scene service perception lags behind industrial heritage perception and industrial landscape perception in actual experiences, making it the primary target for improvement in tourist attractions. (3) Perceived quality and perceived value jointly influence tourist satisfaction that exerts the strongest and direct driving effect on loyalty. This paper reveals the formation mechanism of tourist loyalty in the context of industrial tourism, enriches the applicability of the CCSI model in the field of industrial tourism, and provides insight for industrial tourist attractions to optimize experience design and strengthen visitor recognition, and thus is of great significance for boosting the protection of industrial heritage and high-quality integration of culture and tourism.