IMAGE FORMATION IN RURAL TOURISM DESTINATION

Purpose – Tourism can be an efficient factor of quality and sustainable development especially in the countryside. Nowadays many rural communities are facing agriculture decline and tourism can enable a new concept of economic development. Rural tourism is multifaceted since it can consolidate agriculture, forestry, farming, heritage with numerous and various tourism activities far away from urban center and mass tourism. Forming positive tourism image in such destination is essential. The focal purpose of this paper is to empirically test a concept of rural tourism destination image formation which did not fully commercialize their potential as a tourism destination and to define the relationship between different parameters and the image of rural tourism destination. Methodology – For the purpose of identification the relationship amidst different parameters and rural tourism destination image empirical research has been conducted applying accessible deliberate sample of tourists (600) who had visited rural areas near famous world tourism destination - Dubrovnik, Croatia in a period June 2017 - January 2018. 534 questionnaires were found to be fulfilled correctly and were used in further analysis. Data were analyzed in three steps. First, to detect the sub dimensions of affective and cognitive determinants of image exploratory factor analysis was enforced. Secondly, to test validity of the dimension of the different image components, confirmatory factor analysis was used. Thirdly, structural equation modeling was used to examine which dimension has important influence on the rural tourism destination overall. Findings – The findings suggest several differences among various analyzed image dimensions. The affective dimension of the image has an important aspect in image formation and has significant influence on the rural tourism destination overall image. Contribution – The results of this paper have provided useful strategic direction for the rural tourism destination in order to improve their competitiveness. To upgrade the current image into the marketing strategy, affective image dimension of the rural tourism destination such as experience should be presented in the further marketing communication of the regional and national tourist boards.