An empirical study of Saudi Arabia destination image towards love world of mouth and loyalty: scale replication and validation

Abstract

This research aims to propose the most suitable destination image measurement for Saudi tourism by replicating Tsiotsou et al. (2010) SDI scale, which would enhance tourism experts’ abilities to better manage the Saudi tourism ecosystem. This study explores the correlations among the hypothesised framework with constructs of DBI, BL, WoM, and LOY by employing the most proper data analysing approaches, which are the sequenced two types of factor analysis EFA and CFA plus SEM to evaluate the theoretical relationships within the framework. Subsequently, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to re-examine Tsiotsou et al. (2010) SDI scale in an Arabic-native context. This paper reveals a practical scale with statistically convenient dimensionality that built from14 sub-items. The outcomes of the present paper consist of some findings and facts regarding destination image, destination love, destination WoM, as well as tourist loyalty. Also, the results confirmed that destination love can justify the collected emotions tied by vacationers to their selected destination. Lastly, our analysis pointed out that inspired visitors’ feelings of destination love strongly motivate a positive WoM, and both enhance tourists’ loyalty for a tourism destination. This study’s conclusions were attained from N=381 satisfactory forms that were gathered electronically from Saudi residents and visitors due to limited expenses and time. The data was analysed with the Partial Least Square SEM (PLS-SEM). The formed hypothetical assumptions were all statistically supported. Academic and administrative contributions are presented alongside the acknowledged limitation.