The influences of authenticity and experience quality on behavioural intention in cultural heritage destination

Cultural heritage tourism is essentially comprised of cultural tourism and heritage tourism. Authenticity of the attractions is unquestionably the most critical success factor for this niche tourism. While authenticity of the “built heritage” has been extensively studied, the authenticity of the presentation of the “local culture” seems to be ignored by past researchers. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of heritage authenticity, and cultural authenticity on behavioural intention in the context of cultural heritage tourism destination. This study also anticipates that the above relationships are mediated by the quality of experiences. This study involving 500 foreign tourists visiting the Malaysia’s first World Heritage City, Malacca City used questionnaire survey as the data collection method. The results show that only heritage authenticity is positively related to behavioural intention while cultural authenticity affects behavioural intention via experience quality. Heritage authenticity also shows insignificant relationship with experience quality.