Why Do Tourists Wear Hanfu to Travel? Exploring the Antecedents of Tourists’ Behavioral Intention

Hanfu, in addition to its utilitarian function, is more like a medium or symbolism for tourists to express their social or cultural identity and one of components of contemporary fashion culture which has attracted an increasing number of tourists to wear when they travel. Understanding tourists’ behavioral intention of wearing Hanfu is of great significance in the development of destination management strategies to attract more tourists. Therefore, this study explores the formation mechanism of tourists’ behavioral intention based on the use and gratification theory and the introduction of perceived authenticity. Five motivational factors, namely, entertainment, self-presentation, social, aesthetic and national cultural confidence, were refined through in-depth interviews. Afterwards, the empirical investigation of 679 samples to testify the impacts of these motivational factors with the mediating effect of tourists perceived authenticity on tourists’ behavioral intention has been conducted. Consequently, except tourists’ self-presentation gratification doesn’t correlate with perceived authenticity, all other factors covering tourists’ entertainment, self-presentation, social, aesthetic and national cultural confidence motivations were verified to positively affect tourists perceived authenticity and their behavioral intention. Moreover, tourists perceived authenticity were determined to mediate the correlation between tourists’ social/aesthetic gratification and behavioral intention. Collectively, the research findings would help establish destination management strategies related to establishment of Hanfu-related activities or festivals.