Creative community micro-renewal is becoming a key strategy to revitalize urban neighborhoods and enrich tourism experiences, yet the mechanisms, linking experience settings to tourist intentions, remain unclear. This study investigates the Huangjueping regeneration project in Chongqing, China, integrating the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework with empowerment theory. A mixed-methods design combined interviews with 39 visitors and a survey of 586 tourists analyzed via SmartPLS. The findings show that physical, natural, and social experiences enhance novelty-seeking and place attachment, mediating experience-intention links. Empowerment capability strengthens most pathways, except the natural experience dimension. Symbolic and short-term social experiences were weaker, revealing contextual thresholds. The study proposes an "experience-perception-intention" model tailored to micro-renewal tourism, extending theory by incorporating empowerment as a moderator and offering practical insights for designing participatory, emotionally engaging environments that foster loyalty and sustainable regeneration.
Chen et al. (2025) studied this question.