A systematic literature review of the theory of planned behavior in tourism, leisure and hospitality management research

Abstract

The purpose of the current paper is to review the implementations of the theory of planned behavior (TPB), as one of the most widely used social-psychological model in the literature, in terms of feasibility, testability, methodological suitability, and validity within in the framework of tourism, leisure and hospitality management (TLHM). Based on a comprehensive review of TLHM literature, the search returned a total of 1559 full-text articles. After applying the criteria for selection without a specified period, a total of 259 publications from 98 high-impact journals indexed in SSCI, SCI, and ESCI using Scopus CiteScore metrics were included to be reviewed. Unlike previous studies, the current study contributes to the existing literature by conducting a systematic review of the TPB literature with a holistic view and providing up-to-date research findings in the field. The results of the study suggested the following conclusions: (i) TPB, which has widely been extended to different contexts in TLHM literature recently, differs from most social psychology theories in terms of feasibility; (ii) the theory mainly covers consumer behavior and there are few studies addressing managerial or employee-related issues, (iii) the previous studies seem to be dominated by the survey-based methods posing various limitations in practice. Limitations and future directions of the current study are discussed.