ABSTRACT

Sites imbued with an intense sense of history and cultural heritage enable tourists to engage in transformative activities. A temporary mode of being occurs when tourists are immersed in their surroundings; sites become spaces enabling and facilitating transformative engagement. In theorising this impact, this theory testing case study is founded on the conceptualisation of liminality, combining it with contemporary theories of engagement. The theoretical contribution is delivered by exploring how liminal spaces deepen tourists’ engagement when visiting cultural heritage sites by testing and proving a ‘Conceptual Model of the Liminoid Space.’ Applying liminality to visitor engagement at cultural heritage sites enables two theoretical contributions. This is the first paper that applies liminality to a cultural heritage site and investigates the relationship between liminality and engagement by empirically testing and proving Taheri’s (2017) model. This research has practical and managerial implications; an increased understanding of how this liminal space deepens engagement enables business owners to make better site management decisions and secure long-term community employment and wealth generation for the area.

摘要

充满强烈历史感和文化遗产的遗址使游客能够参与变革性的活动。当游客沉浸在周围环境中时，会出现一种暂时的存在模式；场地成为支持和促进变革参与的空间。在对这种影响进行理论化时，这个理论测试案例研究建立在阈限的概念化之上，并将其与当代参与理论相结合。通过测试和证明“阈限空间的概念模型”，探索阈限空间如何加深游客在参观文化遗产地时的参与度，从而提供了理论贡献。将阈值应用于文化遗产地的游客参与可以带来两个理论贡献。这是第一篇将阈值应用于文化遗产地的论文，并通过实证测试和证明 Taheri (2017) 模型来研究阈值与参与度之间的关系。这项研究具有实际和管理意义；对这一临界空间如何加深参与度的深入了解使企业主能够做出更好的场地管理决策，并确保该地区的长期社区就业和财富创造。