Impacts of climate change knowledge on coastal tourists’ destination decision-making and revisit intentions

Abstract

Few studies have examined the effects of number of visits and climate change knowledge on coastal tourists' destination choice sets. Further, the theoretically grounded models of coastal tourists' revisit intention under climate change have been rarely explored. Therefore, we adopted a sequential multi-method approach across two studies and investigated the effects of number of visits (first-time vs. repeat tourists) and climate change knowledge on early and late destination consideration sets. We also applied protection motivation theory and a general model of tourist destination choice to examine the effects of coastal tourists' climate change knowledge, hypothetical shifts in destination attractiveness, perceived climate change risks at destinations, and place attachment on revisit intentions. The results from the first study showed that repeat tourists tended to consider more destinations in both early and late consideration sets. There was a difference in the early destination consideration sets between tourists with high and low climate change knowledge, but no difference in the later destination consideration sets between tourists with high and low climate change knowledge. These results are different from the tripographic characteristics of general repeat tourists that previous studies found, and they confirm the importance of climate change knowledge for destination decision-making. In addition, the results from the second study indicated that climate change knowledge was the most important antecedent of revisit intention, followed by hypothetical shifts in destination attractiveness, place attachment, and risk perception. Thus, future efforts to understand tourists’ destination decision-making in the context of climate change should consider climate change-induced cognition-affective aspects as part of knowledge-centered models connecting destination choice with perceived risks. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.