A study on the relationships between service quality, satisfaction, trust and loyalty among rural tourism

Based on rich literatures, this paper develops and tests an integrative model to examine the relationships between service quality, satisfaction, and trust of rural tourists and to investigate impacts of them on loyalty. The model is tested using surveyed data from 320 rural tourists. The findings reveal that service quality has an indirect influence on loyalty mediating by satisfaction and trust, and satisfaction has a direct influence on trust, as well as a direct antecedent to loyalty, and trust has a significant positive influence on "word-of-mouth communication" variable of rural tourist loyalty, and the progressive relationship exists between intention to revisit and word-of-mouth communication of rural loyalty. Finally, discussions and implications are provided based on research results.