Improving urban Recreational Business District (RBD) from the perspective of visitors’ satisfaction and perception

ABSTRACT The Recreational Business District (RBD) is a more active and attractive place in a city. The development of RBDs has become a popular transforming direction in downtown renewal progress by creating novel attractions for visitors and providing services to them. However, there has been limited research on the RBDs, especially for visitors’ satisfaction. The purpose of our research is to explore the complex relationships between visitors’ satisfaction and their perception of RBDs by using structural equation modeling, thereby providing suggestions for RBD development. We first identify the constructs of visitors’ perception and then examine the effects of these constructs on visitors’ satisfaction based on a case study of Qianmen district in Beijing, China. The data are collected via two on-site surveys, then respectively analyzed by exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling approach. We find that “cultural experience,” “retail environment,” “commodities and activities,” and “service and management” affect visitors’ satisfaction positively, while “visiting resources” and “communal facilities” have no significant effects. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this study and policy suggestions for effective and sustainable development of the RBDs.