A Study on Embodied Experience of Surfing Tourism Based on Grounded Theory—Take China’s Hainan Province as an Example

In the context of the rapid development of surfing tourism in China, the behavior explanation of surfing tourists has not attracted attention from the academic circle. Based on the theory of embodiment, this study takes surfing tourism in Hainan Province as the first case to explain the process and results of body experience in surfing tourism behavior. Based on the grounded theory analysis of the collected online travel notes and on-site interview text materials related to tourism experience, 21 categories and 6 main categories were extracted, and the story line of the surfing tourism experience was constructed based on embodied experience. The results show that the embodied phenomena and processes of the surfing tourism experience affect the quality of tourists’ experience. Surfing tourists experience four typical processes, namely embodied perception, embodied awakening, embodied emotion and embodied extension, and represent the body’s meaning, self-identity and social value through surfing behavior. The research theoretically proposes the embodied experience model and a new category of surfing tourism and provides a reference value for the practice of the surfing tourism industry.