Co-Creating Authentic Rural Tourism Experiences: Pre–Post Evidence on Preference Fit, Learning, Local Interaction, and Purchase Intention

This study assesses perceived changes associated with the application of a structured co-creation process to the redesign of an authentic rural tourism product by aligning local resources, stakeholder knowledge, and potential users’ expectations. The empirical context is Salinas de Guaranda, Ecuador, where a tourism product was redesigned and evaluated through an applied one-group pretest–posttest design involving a purposive evaluation panel of 28 participants, including tourism stakeholders, local representatives, and potential users with direct knowledge of the product and destination. The assessment covered perceived preference fit, learning opportunities, participation in activities, social interaction potential, memorability, purchase intention, and willingness to share experiences, all measured using five-point Likert scales. The results show statistically significant perceived improvements across all indicators after the redesign, even after applying the Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons (p < 0.00556). The largest increases were observed in satisfaction with interests and preferences (Δ = 1.32; dz = 2.78), purchase intention (Δ = 1.21; dz = 1.32), and learning (Δ = 1.07; dz = 2.83). Significant increases were also found in perceived interaction with the local community (Δ = 0.64), participation in activities (Δ = 0.55), memorability (Δ = 0.82), and willingness to share experiences. These findings suggest that structured co-creation may help strengthen the perceived fit between rural tourism products and user expectations while enhancing the anticipated experiential and relational potential of authentic tourism products, including situated learning, active participation, and social interaction. The article contributes applied pre–post evidence on how participatory tourism design may support more marketable, memorable, and locally grounded rural tourism experiences, while recognizing that the design does not establish definitive causal effects.