Modelling the overall image of coastal tourism destinations through personal values of tourists: A robust regression approach

Abstract

The overall image of a destination is one of the main factors considered by tourists when choosing a destination to visit. Coastal destinations traditionally offer sun and beaches as tourist attractions, providing unique experiences and meaningful exchanges for tourists. Personal values are one of the most used and tested transcultural theories in different contexts and cultures. This study attempts to investigate the overall image of coastal tourism destinations through the personal values of tourists, in the context of international tourism. A random survey was conducted through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) with 1106 respondents. A set of the robust regression models was conducted to test the formulated hypotheses. Results support the hypothesis that the overall image of the destination is influenced by the respondents’ personal values. The findings also indicate that personal values and their respective effects change, according to the overall image of coastal tourism destinations. The data analysis revealed that there are significant direct positive and negative effects of personal values on the overall image. This study contributes to the theory and can be of interest to both academics and practitioners. In the face of these advances to understanding the attitudes of consumer behaviour, tourism marketers should focus on developing an overall image of coastal tourism destinations that emphasize independent action, feeling, and readiness for a new experience of this market segment.