Relationship between Visual-Soundscape Perception and Tourist Satisfaction

Tourist's satisfaction depends on their sensory perceptions and experiences including visual, auditory and other aspects. Traditional tourism research which focused on "tourist gaze" pay more attention to visual perception and experiences than others. However, recent studies on tourism argue that auditory perception and experiences of soundscape should also be given sufficient consideration when examining the quality of tourists' experiences. What is the exact role of visual and auditory perception in forming tourists' satisfaction, and what is the relationship between visual-soundscape perception and tourist satisfaction remain to be unsolved. Based on 357 questionnaires collected from Hongcun ancient village in Anhui Province, China, in July of 2016, the Structure Equation Model was used in the paper to analyze the relationships between visual expectation, visual perception, auditory expectation, auditory perception and tourist satisfaction. The results show that both visual and auditory expectation of soundscape have positive influences of tourist satisfaction, and moreover, the coefficient of visual perception and satisfaction (0.495) is much higher than that of auditory perception and tourist satisfaction (0.309), which means that the impact of visual perception on tourist satisfaction is significantly greater than that of auditory perception. Such a result coincides with our common sense of tourist's destination cognition. On the other hand, the results also verify that auditory perception plays an important role together with visual perception in cultivating tourists' positive satisfaction, which provides insights on the development of visual landscape and auditory environment of destinations. Suggestions and strategies were also proposed for destinations to improve their landscape and soundscape to attract and satisfy more tourists.