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1. Introduction
Competition among tourism destinations has become increasingly fierce with the rapid development of global tourism (Quoquab et al., 2021; Giannopoulos et al., 2021). Moreover, destination positioning based on functional attributes is replaceable (Usakli and Baloglu, 2011). To effectively avoid homogeneous competition, branding has become the most potent market development tool for destination marketing. Therefore, all types of tourism destinations regard brand building as crucial in destination management (Yuan and Gu, 2015; Ruiz-Real et al., 2020). By creating unique and stable brands, tourism destinations can achieve differentiation and establish strong emotional and behavioral connections with tourists (González-Mansilla et al., 2019).
Scholars have introduced brand equity in marketing to the destination level to evaluate tourism destination brand’s performance effectively and designed customer-based tourism destination brand equity in recent years (Ferns and Walls, 2012). Destination brand equity combines a series of critical elements. These key elements could be considered as the overall utility of the destination brand rendered by tourists relative to the destination’s competitors (Boo et al., 2009). The positive cognition of brand equity could make tourists better perceive the destination value, respond well to the destination brand and commit to the destination brand (Chi et al., 2020; Lim and Weaver, 2014).
Brand authenticity is another aspect crucial to the success of destination brands (Newman and Dhar, 2014). Due to modern society’s complexity and the tremendous development of technology, consumers strongly demand authenticity (Chen et al., 2020). Similarly, tourists mainly travel to seek authentic experiences (Wang, 1999). Therefore, improving the brand authenticity perception of tourists can effectively increase the destination’s attractiveness and affect tourists’ destination choice behavior, such as revisit intention and recommendation intention (Kolar and Zabkar, 2010).
Strong brand equity contributes to the meaning or value that tourists perceive in a tourism destination, thus affecting tourists’ intention to visit the destination (Lim and Weaver, 2014; Kim et al., 2008). Authenticity stimulates visitors to travel to distant places as a universal value and a critical driving force (Lu et al., 2015). This means that destination brand equity and brand authenticity are significant to tourists’ destination choice intentions (Salehzadeh et al., 2016; Phung et al., 2019). Tourism destinations with strong brand equity and brand authenticity...