Muslim Travelers' Inconvenient Tourism Experience and Self-Rated Mental Health at a Non-Islamic Country: Exploring Gender and Age Differences.

Heesup Han,Beenish Tariq,Soyeun Lee,Antonio Ariza-Montes,Alejandro Vega-Muñoz,Su-Hyun Park,Amr Al-Ansi

doi:10.3390/ijerph18020758

Abstract

This research examined international Muslim travelers’ intention formation of a non-Islamic country. Our proposed theoretical framework encompassing inconvenient tourism experience, mental health, hedonic value experience, and satisfaction included a sufficient level of predictive power for intent. These variables played a vital role in increasing intention, whereas an inconvenient tourism experience decreases self-rated mental health and hedonic value. Our result also provided meaningful information that boosting Muslim travelers’ mental health, hedonic experience, and satisfaction is essential for minimizing the effect of the inconvenient tourism experience. In addition, gender and age have been shown to play a moderating role in affecting behavioral intention.

Highlights

Accepted: 14 January 2021Muslim tourism has considerably grown in the global tourism market over the past decades [1,2,3,4]
This study aimed to investigate the causal associations among Muslim travelers’ perceived inconvenience of tourism experience, self-rated mental health, value from hedonic experience, and satisfaction, as well as to examine whether gender and age play a moderating role in the potential influence of such relationships on behavioral intentions towards non-Islamic destinations
The composite reliability (CR) values were all above the minimum threshold of 0.70 [55], which confirms the internal consistency in scale items

Summary

Introduction

Muslim tourism has considerably grown in the global tourism market over the past decades [1,2,3,4]. In 2019, Muslim tourism has contributed USD 180 billion to the global economy. It is further expected to grow to USD 300 billion in 2020 [5]. In the highly competitive international tourism marketplace, the fast-growing Muslim tourism is nowadays considered as an important niche market [6,7,8]. Many non-Islamic countries are paying attention to this emerging Muslim tourism sector, making diverse endeavors to boost the increase of the number of overseas Muslim travelers [3,7].

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Methods

Results

Conclusion