The impact of cultural tourism digital humans in China on tourists’ travel intentions

This study examines how cultural tourism digital humans (CTDHs) shape travel intentions through a tripartite framework integrating memetics, affordance theory, and parasocial interaction. Analysing 537 Chinese tourists’ survey responses, three key findings emerge: (1) Both physical affordances (appearance, voice/language, expressions/movements) and psychological affordances (knowledge representation, capability demonstration, emotional expression) significantly enhance tourist attitudes, with appearance and knowledge representation demonstrating dominant effects. (2) Tourist attitudes fully mediate CTDHs’ capability demonstration and travel intentions, showing 18% stronger mediation effects in physical versus psychological affordances. (3) Parasocial interactions strongly moderate physical affordances’ impact on attitudes, while only moderating knowledge and emotional aspects of psychological affordances. The results reveal CTDHs’ operational mechanism: attracting tourists through visual-semiotic design, retaining them via interactive knowledge dissemination, and sustaining engagement through affective resonance. Notably, capability demonstration alone insufficiently drives travel intentions without attitude mediation, highlighting cognitive-emotional processing as critical. These insights offer actionable strategies for optimising digital human interfaces through anthropomorphic fidelity and cultural authenticity, strengthening heritage communication via personalised storytelling, and refining destination marketing through parasocial relationship cultivation. The research bridges theoretical gaps in human-AI interaction dynamics while providing empirical guidelines for enhancing digital service efficacy in smart cultural tourism ecosystems.