Conceptualising audience immersion in tourism performing arts: Definition and characteristics

Immersion has recently become a buzzword in tourism literature; however, its application is often casual and context-blind, without an adequate delineation of what immersion truly entails. This study, focusing on tourism performing arts, establishes a precise and comprehensive conceptualisation of audience immersion to reflect tourists' distinctive experiences accurately. A two-stage qualitative method is employed, incorporating data from online comments and focus group discussions . Analysis via an inductive–deductive approach reveals six key characteristics of immersion, leading to a new and context-specific definition. An experiential model depicting three levels of immersion is established according to the human information processing framework. This study introduces a dual-component method to conceptualise immersion and provides practical insights for better understanding immersive experiences in a specific context. • Adopts qualitative research methods with two stages: online comments and focus group. • Provides a dual-component method to conceptualise audience immersion. • Proposes an experiential model of three-level immersion with their characteristics. • Highlights differences in immersion between tourism performances and other contexts.