An Investigation into the Tourists’ Revisit Intention towards Heritage Site: A Case Study on Varendra Research Museum

Abstract

The declaration of the United Nations the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as the World Heritage Site of two distinct destinations, the Ruins of the Buddhist Vihara at Paharpur and the Historic Mosque City of Bagerhat, has reinforced the importance of heritage tourism in Bangladesh. Along with these two heritage destinations other cultural heritage sites are also of immense attraction to the tourists. Existing literature on revisit intention predominantly focus on different facts from the perspective of various tourism destinations. However, limited attention has been paid on an understanding of the revisit intention of the tourists towards the heritage site was at the central to the thesis in the context of Bangladesh. Thus, the main research objective is to understand the tourists’ revisit intention towards a heritage site. The theoretical approach in this thesis was based on the Expectation Disconfirmation Theory that helped to understand why the tourists are intended to revisit the heritage sites and to identify the factors generating dissatisfaction in the context of Bangladesh. Along with the selection of study sites, collection of required data was important factors in accordance to the theoretical approach that has been adopted in the thesis. One study site, Varendra Research Museum, was selected where tourists come to see the preserved heritage as the site was a heritage museum. Under the Interpretive Social Science paradigm, a qualitative research methodology was adopted in case of this study in order to explore the comprehensive information from the investigated phenomenon. Semi-structured interviews were conducted as the major data collection method for this study. A total of 19 interviews were conducted with the tourists from at the Varendra Research Museum at Rajshahi in Bangladesh, as at this point the interview data had reached the saturation stage. Thematic analysis was carried out in order to analyze the data which were collected from the research participants.