Tourists? Nostalgic Emotion and it?s Influence Factors in Heritage Tourism?A study of Old Mountain Railway

[[abstract]]At the end of the 90s, people were afraid of the advent of the end of the century; on the other hand, they looked ahead with vision for the new century, while at the same time looking back to the 20th century relentlessly. Thus, the turn of the century gave birth to retrospection and the need for contemplation of the nostalgia. The trend of retrospection is now enormous. It has become a great focus of the contemporary popular culture, and the majority of people are seeking comfort from the nostalgia. Under such circumstances, traveling provides a great relief, both physically and mentally. Therefore, what are the characteristics of these historical tourists? What are the components of the emotions that motivate looking back? What are the factors that have great impact on the emotions that hold on to the nostalgia? The objective of this research is to study the characteristics of the historical tourists, and to gain a better understanding of the emotions that cling to the nostalgia and their influences. This research adopted the method of the literature review, in which to structuralize relations between the emotions that cling to the nostalgia and their influences. There are three categories of the emotions that cling to the nostalgia; and they are: the space of the nostalgia, the time of the nostalgia and the emotion of the nostalgia. As for the influences, they are tourist motive, tourist attitude, tourist preference, age, revisit frequency, feelings of being overcrowded and so on. This research was conducted at the sampling locations around the Sheng Shing train station of the Miaoli nostalgia mountain-line on March, 2006. The number of returned valid questionnaires is 201. Based on this research, the ratio of the male and female historical tourists is quite equal, and the age group varies from the year of 1971 to 1980 as the main tourist group. Within this main tourist group, those with education have attained at least the college level, and as far as their marital status is concerned, most of them are childfree. They are classified as the middle class, with a monthly income of less than NTD $40,000. The emotions that cling to the nostalgia, within the historical tourists, consist of the three elements of space, time and emotion. They include contemplating the nostalgia time zone through the usage of symbols to represent the space in the nostalgia in order to show an ideal state of the world; however, the emotions that cling to the nostalgia also involve positive emotions, such as coziness and warmth, as well as the serenity that brings valuable leisure, and which all men are pursuing. The factors that impact the emotions from the nostalgia of a tourist are tourist motive, tourist attitude, and tourist preference. The research also indicates that age has a positive influence on the emotions from the nostalgia, but the factors of overcrowding and revisit frequency have a negative impact on it