How spatial context cues shape experiential credibility in virtual tourism: a mixed-methods study of bodily comfort and flow experience

Virtual tourism increasingly depends on immersive spatial arrangements that combine sensory cues, route organization, and interaction feedback. However, existing research has not fully explained how users judge whether a mediated tourism situation is experientially credible. This study develops the concept of experiential credibility and examines how spatial context cues are associated with this evaluative judgment through perceived bodily comfort and flow experience. An exploratory sequential mixed-methods design was adopted. In the qualitative phase, 30 semi-structured interviews were conducted between January and February 2025 to refine the meanings of spatial context cues, perceived bodily comfort, flow experience, and experiential credibility. Grounded coding identified three spatial context cue dimensions: multisensory coherence, spatial navigability, and interaction responsiveness. In the quantitative phase, an earlier questionnaire was administered to 180 eligible respondents between May and September 2025. Following refinement of the measurement framework, the revised questionnaire was finalized in November 2025 and administered between December 2025 and January 2026. The final analytic sample comprised 240 valid revised-questionnaire responses, including 126 returning respondents and 114 newly recruited respondents. All respondents had completed Tang Dynasty Adventure in Jinan, China and answered the questionnaire with reference to that specific experience. Structural equation modeling was used to assess measurement quality, direct associations, indirect associations, and sequential mediation paths. The qualitative findings showed that experiential credibility was not generated by sensory richness or visual realism alone, but by the coordination of spatial cues, bodily manageability, psychological involvement, and cultural interpretation. The quantitative results supported the proposed mechanism. Multisensory coherence, spatial navigability, and interaction responsiveness were positively associated with perceived bodily comfort and flow experience. Interaction responsiveness showed the strongest association with perceived bodily comfort, while multisensory coherence showed the strongest association with flow experience. Perceived bodily comfort was positively associated with flow experience, and flow experience was strongly associated with experiential credibility. The model explained 43.1% of the variance in perceived bodily comfort, 50.2% of the variance in flow experience, and 32.5% of the variance in experiential credibility. Bootstrap results supported the mediating role of flow experience and the sequential indirect paths through perceived bodily comfort and flow experience. This study shows that experiential credibility in virtual tourism is better understood as an integrative evaluation of whether a mediated tourism situation is coherent, plausible, believable, and culturally meaningful. Spatial context cues become evaluatively meaningful partly through users’ bodily and psychological internalization processes. The findings refine the conceptual distinction between bodily comfort and physiological response, between flow experience and credibility evaluation, and between technical realism and experiential acceptance. The study also offers design implications for developing virtual tourism experiences that users can bodily tolerate, attentively follow, and culturally accept.