From military relics to lasting memories: Mapping nostalgic value transformation in battlefield tourism

Battlefield tourism has increasingly been recognized as a form of cultural and nostalgic tourism; however, existing studies have largely focused on emotional descriptions or motivational typologies, offering limited insight into how nostalgic experiences are transformed into deeper personal values. Addressing this gap, this study aims to conceptualize battlefield tourism as a nostalgia-driven value transformation process by systematically examining how experiential elements evolve into higher-order values. Drawing on tourists’ narratives of battlefield visits, the study identifies key experiential themes and reveals four core values—“unforgettable memories,” “place attachment,” “self-actualization,” and “unique”—that underpin nostalgic battlefield experiences. More importantly, it elucidates three value transmission pathways through which nostalgia operates: “space and memory connection,” “interpersonal and emotional connection,” and “culture and sense of place connection.” By moving beyond descriptive accounts of nostalgia, this study advances battlefield and nostalgic tourism research through a structured explanation of value formation mechanisms. Methodologically, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is employed to extract experiential themes from online reviews, while Means–End Chain (MEC) theory is combined with fuzzy decision-making to model the transformation pathways from experience attributes to underlying values.