Drawing upon service-dominant logic, this study aims to develop and validate a tourist-centered scale for destination smartness by adopting a teleological, psychometric conceptualization. Moving beyond technology-centric views, it conceptualizes smartness as a destination’s functional intelligences, addressing the lack of uniform measurement in smart tourism literature.
A sequential mixed-methods design was employed across three studies. Study 1 used in-depth interviews with 25 experienced tourists to identify the dimensions of destination smartness. Study 2 refined and validated the scale using cross-sectional surveys of 627 tourists who had visited leading Asian smart cities (Hong Kong, Seoul and Singapore). Grounded in the stimuli–organism–response model, Study 3 further validated the scale with 632 tourists, examining how destination smartness influences travel satisfaction through accessibility, informativeness, interactivity and personalization. Known-group validity was also assessed by comparing a high-smartness destination (Beijing) with a lower-smartness destination (Sanya).
The research reveals destination smartness as an eight-dimensional construct: swarm, sensory, communicating, empathetic, learning, mechanical, reactive and memory intelligence. The resulting 31-item scale is psychometrically robust and demonstrates predictive and nomological validity by significantly influencing tourists’ travel satisfaction.
The scale enables tourism practitioners to strategically position their smartness offerings in competitive markets.
This research delivers a foundational reconceptualization of destination smartness as a multidimensional, co-created intelligence. By providing the first validated scale to capture this teleological perspective, it resolves theoretical fragmentation and establishes a unified framework for future research, complementing the one-sided assessment of destination smartness as technological coverage/quality.
