How Cultural and Creative Products Influence Tourism Marketing: Z Generation's Psychological Needs and We-Media Behaviour as Mediators

Cultural and creative products are the key carriers for the transformation of tourism attractions’ value, and the innovation of their marketing models is important to the high-quality development of the tourism industry. Based on the theories of perceived value and uses and gratifications, this study focuses on the "Z generation" and explores how cultural and creative products can stimulate their sharing behavior by meeting their psychological needs, thereby empowering tourism marketing. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is adopted for data analysis. The research results show that: (1) The perceived value of cultural and creative products has a positive impact on the social affiliation need and self-expression need of the "Z generation", specifically, the perceived culture and innovation attribute of products, combined with word-of-mouth, can better meet consumers' psychological needs. (2) Consumers' psychological needs further significantly enhance the marketing effect of tourism through the mediating role of self-media sharing behavior. Compared with these two types of psychological needs, self-expression needs contribute more substantially to the improvement of marketing effects. Theoretically, this study verifies the chain mediating mechanism of "perceived product attribute → psychological needs →we-media behaviours→ marketing effect", deconstructing the linkage logic between cultural and creative products and tourism marketing. Practically, the research offers the industry with youth-oriented marketing strategies for cultural and creative products to precisely target the "Z generation" consumer group.