Abstract
Cultural heritage tourism had become an important tourism type in 90's. The role of perceived authenticity in a destination now is as determinant of tourist experience on tour. Previous studies of tourism authenticity were mostly in the way of qualitative method to collect data; few were use different way to collect tourist's perception of authenticity. This study from tourist's demand side focus on how the perceived authenticity to influence tourist's tourism image, sense of place and intention behavior by using the case of Golden Ecological Park, Jinguashi, Taiwan. Therefore, the data collected by quantative method.Lisrel 8.52 software used to test the structure equation model, and a convenience sample of 384 visitors was selected for the survey. The perceived authenticity was rated for the museum environment and generalized activity of 7 items such as "Benshan Tunnel No.5 tunnel experience", "Environmental Building", "Pan for gold experience", "Japanese style residence", "Atmosphere in the park", "Museum of Gold "and "Gold-refining building". The tourism image was measured by three naming categories of "Local resource", "Travel and impression" and "Emotional image". The "Place identity", "Place attachment" and "Place dependence" three concepts were indicated to sense of place. The behavioral intention after visiting divided as three measurement variables-revisiting, recommendation and willing to pay. The study results are as followed:1. The model revealed that perceived authenticity is significantly and positively related to the tourism image. "Atmosphere in the park", "Environmental Building" and "Museum of Gold" are the significant measurement variables to perceived authenticity.2. Authenticity perception has significantly positive related to sense of place, and tourism image is the important mediate variable between these two variables.The indirect relationship is stronger than the direct relationship.3. Authenticity perception does not simply influence the behavioral intention after visiting, but it is through tourism image and sense of place these two mediate variables to result the positive influence, and the mediated effect of sense of place is stronger than tourism image.4. Tourism image has significantly and positively related to sense of place, and the main effect measurement variable of tourism image is from "Local mining and scenic resource".5. Tourism image does not cause significantly positive influence to behavioral intention after visiting, it needs to through sense of place to be mediate then has positive influence.6. Sense of place has positive influence to behavioral intention after visiting, and the measurement variable of place attachment construct the sense of place.The authenticity perception of heritage can cause higher tourism image. Promotion of the tourism image by marketing, stretch the local characteristic, and connection of sense of place, all will promote the authenticity and make tourist deeper interaction between heritage.