Understanding destination information cocoons and polarization of travel attitude and intention: How can travel experiences mitigate bias?

Abstract

Extant research remains relatively silent on the polarizing attitudes stemming from large-scale conflict events, such as trade wars. Information cocoons, which highlight unilateral information, have been shown to amplify polarized opinions and behaviors. This paper aims to integrate mixed methods with social identity, system justification, and cognitive dissonance theories across four interrelated studies to understand the impact of conflict events and subsequent information cocoons on tourist decision-making. Study 1 leverages the elastic net synthetic control method to compare the actual Chinese tourist travel to the US with a predicted counterfactual scenario without the trade war. Studies 2 through 5, with 300, 423, 517, and 201 respondents respectively, examined tourists’ competing reasonings and approach-avoidance tendencies regarding information cocoons about destinations involved in the trade war. The findings deepen our understanding of how information cocoons amplify polarized thinking and behaviors, which can be partially mitigated by travel experiences to conflicting countries.