Value Co-creation Of Sport Tourism Product And Service In Hangzhou

The study of sport tourism began in the 1960s. There are many different definitions of sport tourism due to different research perspectives. In addition, the main contents of the research focus the basic theory of sport tourism, the economic, social, cultural and environmental influences of sport tourism, the development and marketing of sport tourism products, etc. The theory of value co-creation comes from service economics area, which means that both customers and producers create the value of product or service. In addition, the DART model is based on value co-creation theory, considering dialogue, access, risk assessment and transparency as four dimensions for value co-creation. Hangzhou has a wealth of sport tourism resources with many sport tourism products and services. However, the quality of sport tourism products and services still has much room for improvement, especially in the value creation part. This study tries to understand the current situation about value co-creation of sport tourism products and services in Hangzhou and discusses some proposals for better future development. The study uses questionnaire designed according to the four dimensions in DART model to collect first-hand information from sport tourism customers. The questionnaires were distributed in several main sport tourism destinations in Hangzhou such as Huanglong Gymnasium of Hangzhou and West Lake scenic area, along with online questionnaires. A total of 359 questionnaires were collected, of which 333 were valid. Single factor analysis of variance and independent sample T test in SPSS 22.0 are used to analysis the data. The result shows that in dialogue dimension, most customers do not have communication with producers, being in a state of passive acceptance of products and services. This situation may be caused by the traditional concept of consumption. To strengthen the dialogue section, producers should lead the communication before, during and after the consumption process using new social software to provide the most suitable product and service. In access dimension, customers have many online and offline accesses to get information about sport tourism product and service. However, the information quality cannot satisfy customers’ needs. This requires producers to attach importance to the release of information especially the timeliness and comprehensiveness of information. It provides basic information guarantee for consumers to participate in value co-creation. In risk assessment dimension, customers are lack of adequate knowledge of risk on sport tourism. Therefore, the producers should be more specialized in risk disclosure and the sport tourism industry needs to set up a clear responsibility system. In transparency dimension, the information asymmetry between consumers and producers is obvious, which needs to establish a public information public platform to improve the quality of customers’ participation in value co-creation