Social interactions and intentions to revisit for agritourism service encounters

This study addresses how agritourists' social interactions affect their satisfaction and, in turn, revisit intentions. Adopting social exchange theory and resource theory, the study proposes that social interactions with service providers, local residents, companion tourists, and other customers influence satisfaction, which in turn affects revisit intentions. For this, an onsite survey was conducted to examine the proposed model and test the hypotheses. Subjects (N = 266) were tourists who visited farms. All, but one of the hypotheses were supported or partially supported by the data and the proposed model also had an acceptable fit. Results provide direction for the development of a theoretical framework to understand revisit intentions by seeking to improve the social exchange relationships with agritourists. In addition, the results call for the incorporation of social interactions as a component of the agritourism servicescape.

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