The Dominance of Tangibility in Shaping Visitor Satisfaction: Evidence from UNESCO Heritage Sites in Malaysia

Visitor satisfaction models drawn from SERVQUAL and the Expectancy-Disconfirmation Theory (EDT) typically treat physical service attributes as a baseline concern, secondary to the experiential and relational dimensions foregrounded by the experience-economy paradigm, yet this assumption is rarely tested directly against its most obvious heritage-tourism rivals. This study addresses that gap using data from 153 visitors to Malaysia's UNESCO-listed heritage cities of Melaka and George Town, examining five predictors of visitor satisfaction: experience, perceived value, responsiveness, tangibility, and reliability, each measured with validated Likert-scale items adapted from established SERVQUAL and heritage-tourism instruments. A positivist, cross-sectional quantitative design was adopted. Data were screened for normality and analysed using Pearson correlation and multiple regression, with visitor satisfaction regressed simultaneously on all five predictors to compare their relative strengths directly rather than in isolation. All five constructs correlated positively with satisfaction, and tangibility, encompassing the physical condition, architectural presentation, and aesthetic upkeep of a heritage site, emerged as the strongest statistically significant predictor once all constructs were estimated jointly, outperforming responsiveness and perceived value and outweighing the experiential and relational predictors typically assumed to dominate in contemporary tourism theory. The paper interprets this finding through servicescape theory, arguing that at built heritage attractions, the physical fabric itself functions as the primary evidence of authenticity and care that visitors use to judge their visit, a reading that reconciles rather than simply rejects experience-economy accounts of satisfaction. The findings have direct implications for how heritage-site managers and conservation authorities prioritise physical upkeep over experiential programming when conservation budgets are constrained.

heritage tourism; SERVQUAL; servicescape; tangibility; visitor satisfaction

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