Authenticity became a popular and key term in tourism studies when a landmark contribution related it to the motivation of tourists (MacCannell 1973). While the term authenticity is empirically indispensable in explaining tourists’ behaviors, it is theoretically elusive (Moore et al. 2021). The reason for this lies in the fact that authenticity is a composition of various layers and dimensions. Research is likely to pay attention to some of these layers and dimensions while ignoring others. Broadly speaking, there are two types of authenticity in tourism.
Object-related authenticity is involved in the genesis of toured objects. It consists of a temporal dimension, spatial dimension, and the dimension of ways of experiencing. The former two refer to the traits of the toured object, whereas the latter refers to the effects of tourists’ approaches to the toured object on tourists’ perceived authenticity. The temporal dimension of authenticity includes three.
