Meet the Local Through Storytelling: A Design Framework for the Authenticity of Local Tourist Experience

Based on a rapid ethnographic investigation on a historical site in China, this study aims to formalize a storytelling design framework towards enhancing the authenticity of local tourist experience. Specifically, semi-structured interviews were conducted with residents, tourists, and tour guides. Participatory observation was adopted to understand storytelling behaviors. I analyzed the field data through affinity diagram in two rounds. The first round of analysis was guided by the theoretical lens of Staged Authenticity, bringing the emergence of the core category-the gap towards achieving the authenticity of local tourist experience. This gap is specified as six barriers: social exclusion; mental and physical cost; artificiality; cost-effectiveness; storytelling triggering; and local expertise diffusion. The second round of analysis was guided by the Storytelling Design Framework, resulting in an in-depth comparison of storytelling practices contributed by residents and tour guides. Based on these findings, I formulated the storytelling design framework for the authenticity of local tourist experience and prototyped an audio guide application to illustrate one potential use of the framework. This study enriches understandings of local tourist experience and provide groundings for design applications in tourism.