A study on the relationships of service fairness, quality, value, satisfaction, and loyalty among rural tourists

This paper developed and tested an integrative model to examine the relationships between customer perceptions of fairness, quality, value, and satisfaction and to investigate the impacts of them on customer loyalty (i.e., revisit, word-of-mouth referrals, and alternative destinations). The model was tested using surveyed data from 320 rural tourists. The results revealed that service fairness did not have a direct effect on tourist loyalty, but an indirect effect mediated by service quality, perceived value, and satisfaction, which were three mediating variables. As hypothesized, service fairness had a significantly direct effect on service quality, value and satisfaction, and service quality had a significant influence on value and satisfaction, but not affected any of the variables of loyalty. Value had an indirect effect on loyalty mediated by satisfaction. Satisfaction was the most important antecedent variable of loyalty. Simultaneously, we found there was a progressive relationship between intention to revisit and word-of-mouth of tourist's loyalty. Discussions and implications were provided based on the research results.