Reconsidering Tourism Culture Authenticity: A Social Representations Approach

As a dynamic concept, culture authenticity has long been disputed. Especially multiple perspectives and several benefits stakeholders in tourism, culture authenticity failed to have common view. In this paper, the author analyses tourism culture authenticity and its characteristic based on constructive authenticity. The social representational theory attaches importance to observe man's perception and attitudes on the real social life in the scene, emphasizing the important influence of shared the common sense to the individual attitudes and behaviors. From the perspective of social representations, shared representations of tourism culture derived from social thinking and collective communications into the cognitive system in which tourism culture is reconstructed to reflect the values, norms, and identity of tourism culture authenticity. The author employs SRT to provide a theoretical framework for examining how culture authenticity of tourism destination impacted by external changes motivates the coping responses. At the end of the paper, the author proposes four dimensions to reconsider construction of tourism culture authenticity under the guidance of theory of social representation.