The effect of perceived environment restorative qualities on Chinese visitors’ satisfaction in rural destination Jin Lua* and Fuangfa Amponstirab

Article history: Received: February 16, 2020 Received in revised format: March 22 2020 Accepted: March 22, 2020 Available online: March 25, 2020 With rapid economy development and increasing social competition, the majority of Chinese people living in the city is suffering from daily work and life stress. Due to the inflexible holiday system, Chinese city people prefer visiting a rural destination around the place where they live, which is identified as restorative environment, with the demand of rest and mental replenishment. In order to investigate how perceived rural destination environment qualities influence visitor’s satisfaction, this empirical study conducted a survey on 258 visitors in two rural destinations in Zhejiang province, China. SEM was utilized to analyze the relationship between variables in the proposed conceptual model and bootstrap estimation was conducted to assess the mediation effect of mental recovery between PDRQs and visitors’ satisfaction in rural destinations. The results indicate: Chinese visitors’ perception of compatibility and fascination significantly and directly influence their satisfaction and the perception of compatibility, mentally away and fascination have indirect influence on visitors’ satisfaction with mediation of mental recovery in rural destinations. © 2020 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canada


Introduction
China has witnessed great achievements in economy development and huge progress in modernization and urbanization. Because of the increase of social competition, the majority of people in the city are suffering from enormous stress of daily work and life. China's labor law stipulated a 250-day yearly work system with 8 hours a day plus a maximum of paid monthly extra hours. This adds up to 2000 to 2432 hours worked by per Chinese worker every year, which was considerably high workload compared with 1780 hours annually worked by a U.S. worker and 1356 hours annually worked by a Germany worker, in 2017 (OECD. Stat, 2018). Overtime working has been common phenomenon in China and even become a latent office culture. The accumulated overtime work introduced fatigue will negatively influence people's work performance and well-being, such as deteriorated physical health (de Bloom et al. 2009) and mental problems, including irritability, impatience, distractibility and an inclination to take unnecessary risks (Kaplan, Bardwell & Slakter, 1993). Such negative affections of overtime work have already caused national public concerns in China.
Tourism destination, possessing six environmental restorative characteristics, namely compatibility, extent, mentally away, physically away, discord and fascination, is believed to have the potential for mental recovery (Lehto, 2017). Limited by inflexible holiday system, Chinese city people tend to prefer short trips to rural destinations nearby the place where they live during weekends or short traditional holidays for getting recharged. It's reported that rural destinations hosted over 2.8 billion tourists in China in 2017, which equaled to 56 percent of the total tourist number. Compared with traditional tourism, rural tourism has its own heterogeneity, regarding to visitors' average length of stay, group size, visit motivation etc., which definitely influence the way how visitor assess their visiting experience.
However, the renewed tourism motivation, from seeking novelty to leisure, of China's urban population is obvious and understanding how environmental restorative characteristics influence visitors' experienced mental recovery and satisfaction is critically important for rural destination planners and managers, the investigation into how Chinese city people interact with rural destination environment has totally been ignored by previous researchers.
In order to fill the research gap, present research attempts: a. to identify what exact environmental restorative qualities of a rural destination influence visitors' perception of mental recovery and overall visit satisfaction; b. to investigate how rural destination visitors interact with the identified environmental restorative qualities.

Attention fatigue and restoration
Attention Restoration Theory (ART; Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989), an influential theory of the field of environmental psychology, reveals the principle of interaction between human beings and environment. This theory was established upon the recognition of voluntary attention, also termed as direct attention, and involuntary attention. Voluntary attention is employed, when people do something don't of itself attract attention, such as reading a document or writing a report. Efforts are needed to direct attention to such tasks and inhibit distracting stimuli in surrounding environment. Prolonged efforts of consuming voluntary attention lead to attentional fatigue (Bultmann, Kant, Schröer, & Kasl, 2002). When fatigue accumulated, negative affection takes place on individual's physical and mental well-being (Akerstedt, Kecklund, Alfredsson, & Selen, 2007). Voluntary attention fatigue is expected to disappear after being away from work-related environment for a period of time, such as taking a tea break during work time or taking a work in a garden (Sluiter, Frings Dresen, Meijman, & van der Beek, 2000). Such environments are usually eye-catching, featured in sufficient involuntary attention stimuli where involuntary attention take dominant position and voluntary attention gets recharged. De Bloom (2009) claims more powerful restoration occurs when participating non-work activities with family or friend in a relaxing environment that is away from one's work routine. Therefore, taking a rural excursion with family and friends is conductive to recovery from work introduced fatigue.

Restorative environment characteristics
A restorative environment is place where individual recognizes as being mentally restorative (Berto, 2005), such as visiting to a zoo (Pals et al., 2009), staying in a tourism resort (Guo et al., 2014), participating in outdoor recreations in a national park (Kim et al., 2014) and taking a walk in a forest (White et al., 2013). The Kaplans (1989) identifies four characteristics of restorative environment: fascination, being away, extent and compatibility. Fascination, distinguished between "hard fascination" and "soft fascination", refers to those natural eye-catching environmental qualities. "hard fascination" includes those environment stimuli which are so strong as to have negative affect on one's emotional states, such as a fierce boxing match or gambling. On the other hand, the term of "soft fascination" refers to those aesthetically pleasing environment stimuli, which are conductive to directed attention restoration. Being away refers to the perception of away from the source of daily work or life stress, either physically or mentally. The Kaplans (1989) assert the quality of being away can't be achieved by simply visiting a new place geographically away, as it concludes the concept of both physical distance and mental distance, such as the sense of away from one's responsibility, obligation and duty (Lee & Hyun, 2003). Extent refers to the perception of the degree of spatial scale for activity and exploration (scope) and coherence between internal and external elements of the landscape (Hartig, Korpela, Evans & Garling, 1997). Compatibility The fourth component, compatibility, refers to the correspondence between individual's inclinations, requirements made by the environment conditions and information available in the environment for support of one's goal (Kaplan, 1989). Compatibility can be achieved in condition when the desired activity matches the environment demands and supports (Cho, Um & Lee, 2016). If an environment has ample fascination and extent but is short of compatibility is unlikely to provide restoration function (Laumann et al., 2001). Inspired by ART, Lehto (2013) proposed perceived destination restorative qualities (PDRQ) scale, specifically for measuring tourists' perception of destination restorative qualities. In PDRQ, six environment qualities, compatibility, extent, mentally away, physically away, discord and fascination, are identified as environmental restorative characteristics of a tourism destination. The compatibility factor of PDRQ includes the concept of compatibility and coherence (part of extent) of ART. The factor of extent equals to the scope part of extent of ART. Mentally away and physically away consist of the concept of being away of ART. The factor of fascination inherits the same idea of fascination of ART. The factor of discord is original in PDRQ with four items, measuring distractions a tourist perceived in a destination.

Tourist behavior research based on perceived restorative environment qualities
Guided by ART, huge numbers of studies on restorative environment have been conducted, among which some are related to tourism destinations (Table 1). Pals et al. (2009) developed a new measure, Perceived Restorative Characteristic Questionnaire (PRCQ), based on surveys on two attractions of a Dutch zoo. Pals asserts perceived fascination and escape are significant predictors of visitors' experienced pleasure and preference. Kim's (2014) research based on 400 outdoor recreation participants in a Korean national park indicates perceived environmental restorative qualities affect visitors' well-being, and wellbeing, in turn, affects their satisfaction and loyalty. U.S. scholar Lehto (2013;2016) developed an environmental restoration measure of PDRQ and verified its validation in the context of Chinese culture. Lehto (2017) points out overall recovery mediates the relationship between perceived restorative qualities of a destination and vacationers' overall satisfaction. With application of PDRQ, Chinese scholar Chen conducted two studies in a hot spring resort (2017) and a forest resort (2018). The first study indicates fascination is a predictor of Chinese vacationers' experienced pleasure and PDRQ as a whole is a predictor of preference for a destination. The second study indicates fascination and compatibility significantly influence vacationers' satisfaction and behavior intention. However, both studies suggest the subscale of discord should be removed from PDRQ scale when measuring Chinese tourists' perception of restorative environment, as discord is simply not a factor reflecting environment restoration perception and Chinese people influenced by the cultural values of pursuing "unity of Yin and Yang" tend to "accept contradictions as part of the natural order". Following Chen's suggestion, the subscale of discord was removed from present study.

Research Hypotheses
Based on the subscales of PDRQ proposed by Lehto (2013), Chen's (2017Chen's ( , 2018 verification of the validation of PDRQ in the context of Chinese culture and other related existent studies, two hypotheses are proposed in this study: H1: PDRQs have significant influence on visitors' overall satisfaction in rural destinations. H2: Overall recovery mediates the relationship between PDRQs and visitors' overall satisfaction in rural destinations.

Research design
This is a quantitative research to identify the cause and effect relationship among PDRQs, visitors' perception of mental recovery and satisfaction in rural destinations in China. People with recent experience (within twelve month) of visiting a rural destination is the population of present study. The targeted destinations are two rural destinations in Zhejiang Province. It's chosen because Zhejiang is in leading position over China in rural tourism development with carrying out the program of completing the construction of 10000 scenic villages by 2021. The relationships of five dimensions (excluding discord) of PDRQ, tourists' mental recovery and satisfaction were tested by applying AMOS 24.0 with data collected with questionnaire.

Survey instrument
A cross-sectional survey was applied as the research instrument for present study. The questionnaire included three parts. The first part collected demographic features and trip characteristics. The second part was based on PDRQ scale measuring respondents' perception of environmental restorative characteristics (excluding the subscale of discord) in rural destinations. It included five dimensions with altogether twenty-six items. Participants indicated on a 7-point Likert scale of the degree how much they agreed with the statements, ranging from 1 "totally disagree" to 7 "totally agree". Following Chen's (2017) and Kim's (2014) studies, the last part assessed visitors' perception of mental recovery and satisfaction, same as part two, seven statements regarding to mental recovery perception and overall satisfaction followed 7-point Likert scale was utilized.

Sample and data collection
The respondents were obtained applying convenience sampling at two rural destinations with different themes, one is Mei-jiawu Village of Hangzhou which is featured for tea culture, the other is Nanxijiang River of Wenzhou known for pastoral landscape, during June 29, 30 and July 6, 7, 2019. In these four days, 334 visitors who just finished their vacation and were about to leave the destinations were asked to complete the questionnaire in relation to their trip experience. The data collection process resulted in 258 completed questionnaires and the response rate is 77.2%. The profiles of respondent demographics and trip characteristics are indicated in Table 2. The gender ratio of respondents was fairly even with 124 men and 134 women. The majority of respondents were between 21-40 years old (47.7%) followed with the group of visitors between 41 and 60 years old (31%). The most common purposes of visiting were rest (39.5%) and bonding (36.4%). With regarding to length of visit, most respondents were paying a same-day visit (85.7%) and rural destinations were fresh to only 4.7% of all respondents.

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)
Brown (2006) points out that, in many cases, problems with SEM models are often due to measurement model issues those can be identified with CFA. Therefore, CFA on each single measurement model was conducted to evaluate whether the measured variables accurately reflect the desired constructs. As shown in Table 3, model fit indices of each single construct indicated satisfying constructs validity in measurement model (Kenny, 2015). Subsequently, the goodness of fit of the overall SEM model was assessed (Fig. 1). The X 2 /DF value was 1.293 (1< X 2 /DF<3) and the Root Mean Square Residua (RMR) value was 0.065 (<0.08), which indicated an overall good fit; the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) was 0.982, Incremental Fit Index (IFI) was 0.982, and Tacker-Lewis Index (TLI) was 0.980, all larger than the critical value of 0.90; the RMSEA value was 0.034 less than the thresh-old value of 0.08. Altogether, these values of the fit indices suggested that the model fit the data adequately (Kenny 2015). Following model fit test, the convergent validity and reliability was assessed. The standardized factor loading (SFL) estimates of all measurement items were between 0.724 and 0.936, higher than 0.6 (Kenny, 2015). The average variance extracted (AVE) estimates ranged from 0.686 to 0.828, higher than 0.5 (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988). Composite reliability of each construct was between 0.884 and 0.955, higher than 0.7 (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). The detailed results are presented in Table 3, indicating satisfying convergent validity and reliability. Discriminant validity assesses the extent to which a construct is truly distinct from other constructs (Kenny, 2015). With Anderson and Gerbin's first step approach (1988), the correlations among seven latent variables were between 0.299 and 0.804. The AVE square root of each variable was larger than any correlation between that particular variable and any other variables, which revealed that the discriminant validity was achieved and Type II error rate was quite low. There was no issue of multicollinearity among constructs in this study and unidimensionality was confirmed through CFA (Table 4).

Structural equation modeling (SEM)
Maximum likelihood estimation was conducted by AMOS 24.0 to evaluate the model validity. The standardized path coefficient of the model is shown in Fig. 1. Three PDRQ components appeared to be effective on mental recovery, among which fascination had most effect on mental recovery (path coefficient=0.573; significant at C.I. of 99.9%), followed by compatibility (0.161; 99%) and the third mentally away (0.148; 95%). Extent and physically away didn't appear to have any notable effect on Mentally away. For influence over satisfaction, two PDRQ components, namely fascination (0.252; 99%) and compatibility (0.242; 99.9%), appeared to be significant. Additionally, mentally recovery (0.347; 99.9%) also had influence on overall satisfaction. Fig. 1. model path coefficient. * significant at p<.05; ** significant at p<.01; *** significant at p<.001

Mediation and effect size analysis
Subsequently, the direct effect, indirect effect (through mediation of mental recovery), total effect and difference in total effect of PDRQs on overall satisfaction were assessed following the process of Sobel (1982) suggested. Bootstrap estimation was conducted at 5000 times with confidence interval of 95% by AMOs 24.0 and the results is presented in Table 5. First, the sense of mental recovery mediated the relationship between three PDRQ components, namely compatibility, mental recovery and fascination, and visitors' satisfaction, while the indirect effect of extent and physically away on tourists' satisfaction through mediation of mental recovery was insignificant. Second, only compatibility and fascination had direct influence tourists' satisfaction. Third, with regard to total effect over satisfaction, compatibility, mental recovery and fascination were significant. Moreover, there was no significant difference between total effect of compatibility and fascination, while the total effect of mentally away was relatively weaker than that of the former two components.

Discussion
First, in rural destinations not all the environmental restorative qualities appeared to have effect on Chinese visitors' satisfaction. PDRQ components of compatibility and fascination were found to have both significant direct and indirect effect (mediated by mental recovery) on visitors' satisfaction, while mentally away appeared to have only indirect influence (mediated by mental recovery) on visitors' satisfaction and its direct influence was insignificant. These findings were echo of what Pals (2009) and Chen (2018) found in their studies on visitor/ vacationers in different types of destinations. Pals asserts Fascination and escape are significant predictors to experienced pleasure. Chen indicates fascination and compatibility are significant in predicting satisfaction. In Addition, mentally away was found to have no direct influence on visitors' satisfaction during visiting a rural destination and its total effect was significantly weaker than compatibility and fascination. Mental-away-ness is defined as the perception of distance from daily obligations, routine and duties. Environment with ample stimuli of voluntary attention definitely contributes to mental fatigue recovery. However, due to the extensive use of information and communication technology in office work, work-related apps in the smart phone, such as email, WeChat, Dingtalk etc. and smart phone itself connect individuals to their daily work at any time, which makes individual difficult to obtain the perception of free from everything in daily life. What's more, present study focused on rural tourism and 85.7% respondents were paying a same-day trip. Compared with traditional vacation trip, the relatively shorter period of escaping from daily work and relatively short geographical distance away from work place of rural excursion weaken visitors' perception of disconnectedness to their daily work. Therefore, the modern life/work style and unique characteristics of rural tourism reduce the effect of mentally away on satisfaction. Third, extent and physically away were found to have no significant effect on visitors' satisfaction. the PDRQ components of extent and physically away refer to the characteristics of environment itself. Significant components, such as fascination is related with visitors' interests and compatibility is, to some extent, related to visitor's visiting purpose and expectation. Although, Kaplan (1989) identifies perceived environment restorative characteristics to be on same hierarchical level. But it's still reasonable to speculate that perceived environment characteristics influence psychological evaluation of the person-environment interaction. In other words, extent and physically away might influence perceived fascination and, in turn, influence visitors' satisfaction.

Conclusion
Overall, this research identifies the exact environment restorative characteristics of rural destinations which had significant effect on tourists' satisfaction. Chinese people appeared to put most importance on the need for rural destinations to allow the sense of compatibility, fascination and mentally away. The effect of the former two environment qualities was significant both on visitors' mental recovery and satisfactory, while mentally away only had significant effect on visitors' mental recovery and indirect effect on visitors' satisfaction. These discoveries contribute to the understanding of people's restorative perception in rural tourism and could be a valuable reference for rural destination planning and management.

Implication
Compared with traditional tourism destinations, the development of rural destinations lags far behind, so does the research on rural tourism. There is an acute demand for empirical evidence to reveal how visitors interact with rural destination environment and what outcomes of such interaction are. This research tries to response to this demand. First, this study contributes to the conceptual understanding of the potential function of rural tourism in restoring mental wellness. It expands the tourism literature on environment psychology to the specific field of rural tourism. For those prospective tourists who are looking for opportunity of mental and physical wellness during visiting a rural destination in limited period of time, this study could work as a valuable reference. In modern city, most people live under enormous work challenges and life stress, which leads to the change of motivation of tourism from seeking novelty to health. The finding of this study that compatibility, mentally away and fascination contributes to visitor's mentally recovery, guides prospective tourists' attention to those environment qualities helpful to their recovery and restoration. For rural destination planners and managers, they should utilize the idea of environment psychology in planning, producing and managing rural tourism products for the purpose of satisfying the renewed demand of modern city people. A clear destination image of wellness should be established through marketing and coherence of inside and outside environmental elements should be maintained to enhance the perception of compatibility. Considering divergence in the demands of different market segments, various of events and activities related to local culture and features should be designed and conducted to enhance the perception of fascination and mentally away. Only when most visitors have satisfying experience, the rural destination could gain a competitive advantage over others and achieve sustainable development.

Limitation and suggestion
First, this study concentrates on human-environment interaction in the setting of rural destination. Though destinations in Zhejiang province are representative, the findings based on two selected rural destinations have their limitation. Future research on more different types of rural destinations in different areas are invited. In addition, present study explores what and how environmental restorative qualities works on visitors' satisfaction. Besides the mediation effect of mental recovery, verifying the role of other variables such as tourism motivation, destination preference and revisit intention will be an interesting area in the future. At last, present study reveals some clues of the existence of causal relationship between environmental restorative qualities, future study to investigate such relationship is also invited.