Measuring tourism therapeutic experience: Scale development and cross-destination validation

Tourism functions not merely as a backdrop for therapeutic encounters but as an active intervention—structuring, mediating, and triggering therapeutic experience. Yet this distinction remains conceptually underdeveloped. To fill this gap, this study constructs and validates a tourism therapeutic experience scale grounded in four epistemological paradigms of tourism experience: objectivist, constructivist, post-structuralist, and existentialist. Study 1 draws on semi-structured interviews with 28 tourists and employs grounded theory to extract four dimensions: ambient immersive, social bonding, liminal reassembly, and existential reshaping. Study 2 develops a 20-item scale and validates it through online surveys (N 1 = 228, N 2 = 320, N 3 = 320), demonstrating robust reliability and construct validity. Further cross-destination testing at a coastal site (Qingdao, N 4 = 201) and a mountainous site (Guizhou, N 5 = 202) confirms its structural stability. By integrating epistemological depth with methodological rigor, this research deepens the conceptualization of tourism therapeutic experience and offers a scalable tool for evaluating tourism’s therapeutic potential across diverse socio-material settings.