Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Sub-Department

College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management

First Advisor

Fang Meng

Abstract

Since its introduction, an increasing attention has been paid to the scholarly discussion of value co-creation. One of the most essential problems in value co-creation is the development of comprehensive conceptualizations and measurement scales of value co-creation. However, most existing scales concentrate on co-creation behavior instead of co-creation experience and the development of a valid and reliable measurement scale of co-creation experience has been regarded as a top research priority. Meanwhile, the emergence of shared experience in tourism and hospitality has raised great attention from both academics and industry practitioners. Tourist shared experience such as participating in peer-to-peer accommodation inherently generate co-creation experience. Nevertheless, extremely limited literature exists in discussing peer-to-peer accommodation experience together with value co-creation.

As a result, the purpose of the current study was to explore and understand cocreation experience by developing a comprehensive conceptualization and a measurement scale in the context of peer-to-peer accommodation. The study also examined the relationships between co-creation experiences, customer values in peer-topeer accommodation, satisfaction of overall peer-to-peer accommodation experience and intention of future peer-to-peer accommodation usage.

The current study adopted a mixed-method approach involving both qualitative and quantitative research methods to investigate the nature of co-creation experience and its theoretical relationships with other constructs. A sample of 1200 American tourists who have used and have actively co-created their peer-to-peer accommodation experience was recruited. The multi-stage scale development procedure generated a valid and reliable measurement scale of co-creation experience containing six reflective dimensions consistent with the initial conceptualization (i.e. authenticity, autonomy, control, learning, personalization, and connection). The developed scale captured the full conceptual domain of co-creation experience with the six underlying dimensions collectively constituting the measurement of the higher-order latent factor of co-creation experience. The results showed that all the dimensions exhibited significant and high factor loadings, supporting the proposed conceptualization.

Further, the current study assessed a structural model using co-creation experience as an independent variable (i.e. a second-order latent factor), guest satisfaction and intention as dependent variables, and customer values in peer-to-peer accommodation as partial mediators between co-creation experience and guest satisfaction. Overall, the model fit exceeded the suggested satisfactory level and most of the proposed theoretical paths exhibited significant and positive empirical relationships. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.

Rights

© 2017, Pei Zhang

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