| In the contemporary context of consumerism and romanticism,mass tourism becomes a booming industry.As tourists' expectation rises up,more and more tourists are no longer satisfied with hasty package tour in the tourism bubble.Instead,they prefer self-guided tour,in-depth tour or family tour.Tourists are willing to grow through travelling,so as to become a second self,which is about to pursuit tourism meaning,as well as to participate and experience in the tour as a special ritual.Since 1980s,rites of passage have been introduced into tourism research by Nelson Graburn.Tourists leave secular daily life to tourism destination,transit their identity from members to visitors,and finally enter the sacred tourism world,that is the liminal space of ritual.Compared with daily life space,liminal space is full of energy,significance and cultural heterogeneity.As the tour ends,tourists return to their daily life;through the identity of liminal space,tourists create new energy and realize the pursuit of tourism meaning.Liminal space is the transition space,where people change form one state to another.However,the boundary of liminal space is unclear.The space of tourism destination is generally considered as liminal space in the present research.Therefore,Tibetan tourists' religious cultural space in the destination can be regarded as liminal space of ritual.Known as the third pole of the world and untouched land,Tibet has attracted numerous domestic and foreign tourists,due to its unique religious culture and beautiful mystic scenery.In this context,religious culture is the core of the cultural heterogeneity of the liminal space experienced by tourists,that is religious cultural space.What is the structure of Tibetan tourists' religious cultural space and how the identity of space is formed,are scientific questions worthy of our further study.Along with the rapid development of Tibetan tourism and research heat of Tibet,Tibetan tourism has been studied from many different angles.Nevertheless,research on tourists' identity of Tibetan religious cultural space has not yet been conducted from the perspective of liminal space of ritual theory.This research relies on the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.41271158 and No.41671144).After the on-the-spot investigation on Tibetan tourism resources and tourists' activities in 2013,the author has carried on field work for 149 days from 2016 to 2017,contacted with 59 cases and issued 907 questionnaires.With the help of multi-disciplinary theories,including rites of passage theory,spatial production theory,environmental perception theory,social cognitive theory,psychology and geography,based on qualitative materials obtained through field work and quantitative data collected by on-the-spot questionnaire investigations,employing tracking survey,in-depth interview,mathematical analysis,structural equation model,dichromic and synchronic analysis,from the perspective of liminal space,this research focuses on tourists' identity of Tibetan religious cultural space,systematically studies the relationship of internal structures of tourists' identity of Tibetan religious cultural space and its spatial evolution.The tourists' "pursuit of meaning" mechanism and the framework of liminal space have been thoroughly discussed;meanwhile,some tailored suggestions have been proposed for the and sustainable development of Tibetan tourism,so as to enhance the appropriate discovery and inheritance of Tibetan local culture,and to provide some references for the tourism development of other ethnic minority regions.The main contents of this study are as follows.Firstly,from the perspective of liminal space,the research significance of tourists' spatial perception and identity construction of Tibetan religious cultural space has been analyzed.Secondly,some main concepts have been put forward,and the theoretical basis has been analyzed;The related domestic and foreign research have been summarized,and field work has been done based on these previous research.Thirdly,through a diachronic investigation on multiple cases,combined with in-depth interviews and Internet field work materials,the evolution law and measurement index system of tourists' liminal space have been concluded and constructed.The quantitative data of field work has been collected,verified and analyzed.Finally,the strength of relation,direct causality and indirect covariant relationship of each node in tourists' identity of Tibetan religious cultural space have been thoroughly discussed to build SEM model,and the spatial perception and identity construction of different tourist groups have been compared to find the diversity pattern of liminal space.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)From the perspective of liminal space,the framework of tourists' identity of Tibetan religious cultural space consists of spatial perception,space conception and lived space.Tourists,identity of Tibetan religious cultural space is the result of the interaction among spatial perception,space conception and lived space.(2)The measurement index system of tourists' identity of religious cultural space developed in this study are feasible.The indices for spatial perception includes 5 categories,those are hierophany,body schema,human characteristics,natural scenery and tourism environment;the indices for spatial conception includes 3 categories,those are behavior imitation,structure weakening and most-favored land;the indices for lived space includes 3 categories,those are destination and role identity,cultural identity and self-identity.The applicability of the measurement index system validates the conclusions of the early field work.(3)It is found that the establishment of tourists' identity of Tibetan religious cultural space can be summarized as follows:firstly,tourists enter liminal space through the perception of religious cultural space;then the spatial perception is elevated to the symbolic spatial conception,emerging a vague state with liminality weakening tourists'original structure;finally,the space conception is represented by lived space's identity,and tourists gain emotional energy through this construction of identity,eventually leaving liminal space and realizing the pursuit of "tourism meaning" and "cure".(4)Through a deep exploration of the SEM models based on the manifestation of hidden variables,a best model has been chosen out of three alternative models.It is found that,a main axis exists in tourists' identity of Tibetan religious cultural space,that is "spatial perception,space conception,lived space,overall evaluation".(5)By comparing different tourist groups' identity of space,it is found that female tourist groups and tourists with religious motivation have stronger identity and perception of religious cultural space,with a stronger sense of tourism ritual,and come closer to the "liminality" in transition stage of rites of passage,that is liminal space.(6)Tourists,overall evaluation is related to their identity of religious cultural space.The strength of identity affects tourists' overall evaluation about destination,including overall satisfaction,willingness to revisit and willingness to share.Meanwhile,the cultural identity stimulates tourists' sharing willingness;and the self-identity has the most profound impact on overall satisfaction.The innovations of this study are as follows:(1)A method that combining qualitative and quantitative research has been innovatively introduced into the study of tourists' identity of liminal space.Traditionally,liminal space in anthropology has been studied only with qualitative research method,whose results are difficult to quantify.From the perspective of liminal space,this study has not only employed qualitative research to explore tourists' identity of Tibetan religious cultural space,but also adopted quantitative method to find the relationships among variables in identity and construct quantitative models,which realized organic combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis in empirical study of tourism anthropology.(2)The measurement index system and conceptual model of tourists' identity of Tibetan religious cultural space has been constructed.The three SEM models have been thoroughly studied by manifesting hidden variables,so that the path association of adjacent nodes can be determined.The quantitative relationship between adjacent nodes of tourists' identity model of Tibetan religious cultural space has been analyzed in time dimension;and religious cultural spatial perception and identity of different Tibetan tourist groups has been compared and studied.(3)From the perspective of liminal space,the framework of tourists' identity of Tibetan religious cultural space has been found,that is spatial perception,spatial conception,and lived space.Aided by spatial production theory,and from the perspective of social nature of space,the liminality of tourists' religious cultural space in Tibet has been analyzed,identity construction and meaning production of religious cultural space has been studied,and the interaction and production of spatial triad structure,that is "spatial perception,spatial conception,and lived space",in liminal space has been proposed.(4)Tourists' identity of Tibetan religious cultural space and liminal space has been studied,to enrich tourism ritual theory.The research on limen in tourism ritual theory has always been conducted on the macro theoretical level.This study has applied liminal space theory to empirical research,with Tibet as the case of limen study the first time.The framework and function of liminal space has been explored in detail.For the limit of time and capability,this research only chosen Tibetan Autonomous Region known by its Tibetan Buddhist culture to study tourists' religious cultural spatial perception and identity construction in liminal space,which has some constraints on its universality,and its scope shall be expanded in the future research. |
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