Antecedents of tourist trip planning autonomy: The moderating effects of a global economic crisis

Abstract

With national data from tourists who reside in Spain, this article researches antecedents of tourist autonomy in trip planning, including both tourists’ characteristics and details of their trips. The results indicate positive relationships of tourists’ educational background and their travel experience with autonomy but negative relationships of trip length with autonomy. These data from Spain also highlight the role of the last global economic crisis, revealing its moderating influence on the relationships among several of the antecedent factors and autonomy. These results in turn have relevant managerial implications for tourism operators.