The Influence of AI Virtual Spokespersons' Cultural Authenticity on Urban Brand Tourism Attitude: Mediating Effects of Para-social Interaction and Virtual Attachment

The combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and tourism has become a key driver of innovation in the tourism industry. With the continuous advancement of AI technology, the use of virtual digital humans in cultural tourism has created new opportunities, injecting fresh vitality into the urban tourism market. To better preserve and promote regional culture, various localities have actively employed AI technology to launch virtual spokespersons for city brands and cultural tourism. This study takes Fuzhou's virtual spokesperson, "Minhaichuan," as a case study, with authenticity perception as the independent variable, para-social interaction and virtual attachment as mediating variables, and urban brand tourism consumption attitude as the dependent variable. The research aims to build a model to explore consumer attitudes toward urban brand tourism consumption. The study employed SPSS.28, AMOS.29, Process, and R language for data analysis, collecting a total of 2,987 valid questionnaires. The results show that the perception of cultural authenticity of virtual spokespersons has a positive effect on para-social interaction, virtual attachment, and urban brand tourism consumption attitude. Additionally, para-social interaction interaction and virtual attachment significantly mediate the relationship between cultural authenticity perception and urban brand tourism attitude.