Institutional reforms are increasingly recognized as strategic resources in destination development, yet their integration into tourism branding and experience economy research remains limited. This study investigates how policy innovations in the Hainan Free Trade Port—such as customs closure, visa-free expansion, and duty-free shopping—shape destination brand equity, experiential dimensions, and tourist behavior. Drawing on a multi-method design combining policy text analysis, user-generated content (UGC) mining, and comparative benchmarking with Bali, Phuket, and the Maldives, the study constructs and tests a “policy–brand–experience–behavior” framework. The findings reveal that institutional openness enhances brand trust and differentiation, while tourists’ perceptions of co-creativity, shareability, and transformative experiences extend the traditional four dimensions of the experience economy. Moreover, destination brand experience is shown to influence not only revisit and recommendation intentions but also broader citizenship behaviors. Theoretically, the study elevates institutional reforms from contextual factors to testable variables, enriching branding and experience economy scholarship. Contextually, it positions Hainan as a global reference for institutionally driven destinations, demonstrating that sustainable competitiveness depends not only on natural and cultural assets but also on governance capacity to generate communicable value.
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