Travel Decision-making Process Research Articles

Which trust layer better counterbalances the risk impact on travel intentions in a crisis scenario?

The severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry has revived academic interest in evaluating the strategic role of trust in crises. As a force able to mitigate uncertainty and vulnerability, trust can influence people's travel decision-making process. Extant tourism crisis literature concentrates on individual trust levels in isolation, neglecting its multi-faceted nature. Therefore, a research gap emerges in identifying trust layers that most effectively enhance the intention to travel. In order to address this gap, this study adopts a multi-layered trust perspective rooted in the protection motivation theory (PMT). This study aims to analyze the effectiveness of multi-layer trust as a coping mechanism to enhance intention to travel in the cruise industry. This study uses survey data from 661 cruisers and applies structural equation modeling to test hypotheses empirically. Results highlight that trust in the company and interpersonal trust are the most effective antecedents of the intention to travel, effectively mitigating the perceived health risk. Conversely, trust in the vaccine and trust in the certification show no significant influence on the intention to travel. Therefore, in times of crisis, cruise lines should leverage trust in the company and interpersonal trust as strategic tools to counterbalance the perceived health risks and stimulate travel intentions.

Opportunities, challenges and implications of medical tourism development in Hong Kong

AbstractThis study revealed two different sets of push and pull factors affecting the medical travel decision process of two groups of mainland Chinese to Hong Kong, including potential and experienced medical tourists. The relations between identified factors and their willingness of personal visit and recommendation were also investigated. Regarding the recommendation intention, interpersonal acquisition and personal needs satisfaction are mostly considered by travelers in psychological level while recognized high medical reception capacity and quality are also prioritized in the pull aspect. However, local medical service constraints, perceived quality of medical experience shaped by healthcare suppliers, and destination attributes determine the two groups' responses to personal visit intention. Besides, the advantages of developing medical tourism in Hong Kong are implicated as can‐be‐perceived unique cultural attribute, mass tourism fame as medical tourism development basis, and reputation for high‐quality care formed with unintentional or deliberate promotion from third parties and various marketing channels.

Delineating the Impact of social media Networks on Travel Decision-Making Process: An Experience of University Undergraduates

Delineating the Impact of social media Networks on Travel Decision-Making Process: An Experience of University Undergraduates

Tourists’ Online Information Search Behavior: Combined User-Generated and Marketer-Generated Content in Restaurant Decision Making

Tourist information search behavior is one of the most important aspects of risk reduction in the travel decision-making process. Understanding tourists’ behavior when searching for online information has been heavily weighted toward user-generated content (UGC), mainly employed deductive research approaches. This study examines the influence of both UGC and marketer-generated content (MGC) on tourists’ choice of restaurant, using eye-tracking technology to measure customers’ visual behavior combined with retrospective think-aloud interviews. Data was collected from 28 participants in a laboratory-based study. Video recordings of participants’ eye movements during the task aided participant recall in follow-up interviews. This study offers insights into the integrated investigation of the influence of UGC and MGC on tourists’ information search behavior. It validates and extends understanding of the roles of pictorial information, written information, and other factors, and newly clarifies the role of both positive and negative reviews in influencing restaurant selection from international tourists’ perspectives.

Congruity and Incongruity between Projected (DMO) and Perceived (UGC) Destination image – A Comparative Content Analysis

User-generated Content (UGC) in the digital world has gained credibility as a kind of word-of-mouth in recent years with the advent of new Information and communication technologies (ICT). Travelers rely on UGC information than DMO content while the travel decision-making process. No previous research has been conducted to correlate both UGC and DMO destination images of Kerala. The study analyzes the dominant attributes of the destination image of Kerala presented through DMO and UGC Visual Content. Also, find out whether there is any commonality in destination attributes between pictures posted by tourists (UGC) and DMO or vice versa. Images of Kerala were gathered for this study from DMO’s website (www.keralatourism.org), Instagram, and Facebook, two of the most popular social media platforms worldwide. By applying content analysis methodology to the collected DMO and UGC images of Kerala Tourism, the research objectives are attained. Data from the last five years were considered for the study to understand the latest trends and changing patterns. The results aid tourism stakeholders in planning effective social media marketing strategies to capture the imagination of tourists, hence creating a better destination image online.

An examination of tourists’ pre-trip motivational model using push–pull theory: Melbourne as a case study

PurposeTo succeed in a competitive tourist market and attract more foreign tourists, it is essential to have a clear understanding of what travellers are seeking and endeavour to meet those needs, as well as key influential factors in their travel decision-making process. The purpose of the study is to develop and examine tourists’ pre-trip motivational model using the push–pull theory.Design/methodology/approachA tourists’ pre-trip motivational model was developed and then tested based on a sample of 320 Chinese and non-Chinese visitors to Melbourne, Australia, to assess the suitability of the new model. Data were analysed by descriptive and inferential statistical techniques, such as principal component analysis and independent T-tests.FindingsThe analysis revealed statistically significant differences between studied samples in terms of the push and pull factors. In comparison with non-Chinese tourists, Chinese visitors to Melbourne assigned higher importance to resting and relaxing opportunities, family-oriented activities, as well as safety and a high level of service. The identified differences should be reflected in marketing and promotional activities provided to Chinese and non-Chinese travellers.Practical implicationsThe study provides useful information for Destination Marketing Organisations in tourism cities wanting to develop specifically customised tourist products, services and promotion programs tailored to each market.Originality/valueThe proposed extended push–pull model represents a holistic and complex model of the travel decision-making process with the multiple linkages between motivations for travelling, preferences of destination attributes, information source usage, trip expectations, possible constraints for travelling and evaluation of destination choice criteria. Understanding all these factors, their relationship and their influence on the final destination choice is a prerequisite for effective and successful actions on attraction and retention of visitors for all tourist destinations. The developed tourists’ pre-trip motivational model may be used as a conceptual framework to guide subsequent motivational studies in tourism.

Autonomous travel decision-making: An early glimpse into ChatGPT and generative AI

Generative AI technologies, including large language models (LLMs), have the potential to bring significant advancements to the tourism and hospitality industry through an array of ingenious features. ChatGPT, as a type of generative AI, is a state-of-the-art LLM that is bundled with extensive capabilities. This commentary provides an early snapshot of ChatGPT's ability to enhance the tourist decision-making process in the pre-trip, en-route, and post-trip stages. Particularly, ChatGPT greatly differentiates itself from the traditional travel decision-making process by putting the tourist in the driver's seat to actively probe for highly relevant information through a question-and-answer mode. In this research note, we present different scenarios with cases demonstrating how ChatGPT can improve tourists' experience in these three travel stages, with trip planning efficiency, customized recommendations, 24/7 personal assistant, AI-mediated communication fluency, autonomous guided tours, enriched sharing experience, and AI-induced prolonged satisfaction. In summary, these value-added autonomous services provide tourists with travel solutions that are highly cost-effective, offering customized information that allows them to travel with ease.

SNUX2.0: A Social Network Model for Cohort Behavior Analysis as Support for Purchasing Tourism Products and Services

One of the major communication paradigms for corporations and organizations consists of understanding which is the best format in which to communicate, and the effect that each type of content has on the different generations that coexist in the digital ecosystem. Tourism is one of the industry’s most sensitive to this ecosystem, as, nowadays, all stages of the travel decision process are mainly processed digitally. Products are researched, disseminated, and often acquired on digital platforms. This paper uses social media to analyze the online behavior of potential tourists from different generations when searching for commercial and detailed information concerning tourism products. A survey was prepared based on the experience economy theory and disseminated online through social networks. A Social Networks User Experience model, SNUX 2.0, was proposed to analyze the experiences of users from different generations, associated with the use of social networks as a medium through which to find information about tourism products and services. Structural equation modeling using SmartPLS 3.0 was used to analyze the proposed model. The study concluded that social networks can contribute to influencing the purchasing intent of the different generations, mainly when commercial information has an educational nature for all generations, accompanied by different dimensions depending on the consumer’s generation.

Travelling During The COVID-19 Pandemic

The research is to study the domestic tourists’ considerations and perceived risks and how they allay the disharmony that occurs between the desire to travel and to stay at home because of the pandemic situation, to their decision making in traveling to Bali. Data were collected through questionnaires to 96 domestic Bali tourists and interview with 5 individuals from them to gain deeper insights on the travel decision-making process between January-February 2022, a point where the COVID-19 case in Indonesia rose once again after its stagnant low case report in the third quarter of 2021. Regression analysis was performed and suggest that there is an impact between the perceived risk on purchase decision-making. In addition, results revealed that for the most part, these domestic tourists tend to set aside their worries about COVID-19 and other safety concerns so that their choice to visit Bali can be more prominent, essentially because of feeling weary with the pandemic situation which makes them feeling the urgency to escape from the “routine”.

Returning to Travel: Fear, Coping, and Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected the tourism industry, resulting in consequences such as travel fear and a decline in travel and tourism. Recognizing the needs of study in pandemic travel, this study explored individuals’ pandemic travel decision-making mechanism by investigating relationships between pandemic travel fear, coping strategies, resilience against travel fear, and pandemic travel intentions. Further, this study investigated the moderating role of risk tolerance in those relationships. The findings of this study suggest that people responded to pandemic travel fear by engaging in different types of coping strategies (e.g., task-oriented, emotion-oriented, and avoidance oriented), and through the coping strategies, resilience against travel fear was built which positively influenced individuals’ travel intentions during the pandemic. Moreover, this study found significant differences in those relationships across high and low risk tolerance groups except for the relationship between resilience against travel fear and pandemic travel intentions. This study deepens our understanding of the pandemic travel decision-making process providing recommendations on how the tourism industry might encourage tourists to travel during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Decoding the hummus trail of India: regaining the lost prudence

ABSTRACT The paper explores the menace of drug tourism on the hummus trail of India. The study unfolds Israeli tourists’ socio-psychological background, motivations for escape and transformation, and drug use behaviour in India. A qualitative research design was applied to understand travel experiences. The finding highlights three significant themes supported by textual descriptions of narratives produced as evidence. Schmoll’s tourism consumer choice model was used to understand the travel decision-making process. The study proposes curating spiritual experiences through tourism for people’s mental health and well-being by replacing drug abuse on the hummus trail of India.

Content Analysis on Sustainability Dimensions in DMOs’ Social Media Videos Advertising the World’s Most Visited Cities

Rapid population expansion and poorly managed economic growth, unprecedented anthropogenic climate changes, non-renewable natural resources depletion, environmental pollution, social inequity, and loss of cultural integrity generate a global context that calls for urgent adoption of a sustainable development approach in major industries, including tourism. Sustainable tourism development requires the mobilization of tourism stakeholders at all levels and on the demand side through actions related to the travel decision-making process. To stimulate attitude formation and adoption of sustainable tourist behaviors, Destination Management Organizations (DMOs)—the main organizations responsible for sustainable destination development—need to adopt sustainable-oriented communication actions when building the destination image. As tourism stakeholders’ perspective is under-investigated for destination image projection and communication, this paper aimed at assessing the integration of sustainable tourism principles in the promotion of destinations by DMOs; the focus was placed on video advertisements posted on the primary online source of tourism information, social media. Through a content analysis of DMOs’ social media advertisements for the 50 most visited cities in the world, the current study revealed that elements covering all three dimensions of sustainability (economic, socio-cultural, natural) were featured in the commercial discourse, but not in a sustainable explicit standpoint. Besides, the content sporadically reflected sustainable governmental initiatives and projected responsible tourist behavior, while it lacked specific sustainable tourism-related terms. Moreover, several highly popular cities did not have promotional videos. The paper contributes to the body of knowledge on destination image formation by providing evidence from the supply’s side along with an original content analysis grid which can be used to capture and evaluate the sustainable tourism dimensions as portrayed in advertising videos of cities. Additionally, it offers practical implications for DMOs’ marketing communication strategies.

What Does Northern European Travel Means to South Koreans? Focusing on Travel Decision Process

The main purpose of this study is to analyze different types of information that may have diverse effects on the travel decision-making process. We collected the most frequently used words related to “Northern European travel” from Korean news sources and blogs, to determine whether there were any systematic differences through network text analysis and CONCOR analysis. We found that Koreans are exposed to words such as “nature” and “cruise activities”, which may lead them to perceive traveling in Northern Europe as a special experience. While political and diplomatic issues are frequently discussed in the news, practical information is discussed in blogs.

Predicting preventive travel behaviors under the COVID-19 pandemic through an integration of Health Belief Model and Value-Belief-Norm

This study developed a conceptual framework for a preventive travel decision-making process amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, combining the Health Belief Model (HBM) and Value-Belief-Norm (VBN). Analyzing 409 responses collected from an online survey, this study verified the integrated model as a salient theory addressing the importance of social components and health belief factors in affecting behavior. The model revealed that altruistic value influences the HBM variables, whereas personal norms mediate preventive behaviors and beliefs in both VBN and HBM. These findings offer new theoretical insights into decision-making process and provide practitioners with effective crisis management strategies concerning pro-social and health beliefs.

What Drives People to Travel during a Pandemic: The Role of Media Information and Trust in the Government

ABSTRACT In order to better understand of travelers’ risk perception and travel decision in pandemic, this study examines the role of media information and the effect of trust in the government on travel decision making based on the social amplification of risk framework. We perform a structural equation model using 1,156 samples collected through an online survey. The most notable findings are that the exaggeration and volume of media information play significant roles as moderators in the relationship between risk characteristics and perceived risk. In addition, the results reveal that trust in the government completely mediates the relationship between perceived societal risk and travel intention. Based on the findings, this study provides implications for the risk management and travel decision-making process during pandemic crises.

Travel fear and immunity certificates: a two-stakeholder perspective

There is an urgent need in the travel industry to devise strategies that will help navigate the current pandemic as well as provide guidance on how to prepare for the next pandemic. Given health and wellbeing are regarded as important aspects of sustainable development, doing so would build long-term resilience in the travel and tourism industry. This study analyzes the relationships among travel fear, protection motivation, and destination visit intentions in the pandemic context. While previous studies have proposed psychological factors as antecedents of travel fear, this study contributes theoretically to the literature by proposing a conceptual model that allows us to test the way the policy of immunity certificates—which is a non-psychological factor of a risk-reduction strategy—influences travel fear and subsequent decision-making behaviors, where the construct “protection motivation” mediates the travel decision-making process. By adopting customer and investor stakeholder perspectives, this study shows that immunity certificates are effective not only in enhancing travel intentions but also in enhancing the market value of tourism companies. Given that the efficacy of policies is better assessed by multi-stakeholders, the methodological approach taken in the current study can help to better understand the value of COVID-19 measures and immunity certificate policies.

Impact of ICT Literacy in the Travel Decision-Making Process : Focusing on Tourism Content suburb of Seoul on YouTube

COVID-19 이후 관광자는 코로나 이전의 전통적인 관광활동(예: 축제, 레크리에이션)과 달리 근교관광을 선호한다. 관광자는 근교관광의 정보를 얻는 원천으로 유튜브 플랫폼을 이용한다. 유튜브 플랫폼에서 정보를 얻고 이를 통하여 행동까지 연결되는 과정은 AIDA 모델로 설명될 수 있다. AIDA 모델은 유튜브를 통한 관 광목적지 의사결정과정과 마케팅 전략을 논의하는 데 적합한 모델이다. 이에 이 연구에서는 AIDA 모델을 적용하여 유튜브 근교 관광콘텐츠의 목적지 방문의사결정 과정을 규명하고자 하였다. 설문조사는 ‘최근 6개 월 이내 유튜브에서 서울 근교 관광콘텐츠를 시청한 이용자’를 대상으로 2022년 2월 21일부터 3월 9일까지 진행되었으며 303부의 유효표본을 확보하였다. 분석 결과, ICT 리터러시와 주의는 관심에 유의한 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났으며 관심은 열망에 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 관심은 여행의도 에 유의한 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 반면, 열망은 여행의도에 유의한 영향을 미치지 않는 것으로 나타났다. 이 는 여행계획에서 정보수집의 중요성을 나타낸다. 동시에 COVID-19 상황에서 관광자가 관광목적지에 대한 열망을 가지더라도 추가적인 요소(예: 외부적 요인, 심리적 요인)에 의한 영향이 있기 때문에 행동으로 연결 되지 않음을 의미한다. 이러한 결과를 바탕으로 유튜브 이용을 통한 관광정보 수집에서 AIDA 모델의 적용 가능성과 ICT 리터러시의 필요성에 관하여 제언하였다.

Computing travel impendences using trip generation regression model: a phenomenon of travel decision-making process of rural households

Computing travel impendences using trip generation regression model: a phenomenon of travel decision-making process of rural households

Defining risk reduction strategies for tourists with specific food needs: a qualitative approach

PurposeThis exploratory study aims to identify the main risk reduction strategies when individuals suffer from coeliac disease (CD) or non-coeliac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) travel. Based on Yeung and Yee's (2013; 2019) model, the paper offers a new framework for analysing the main travel risk reduction strategies for people with specific food needs. The empirical work focuses on the perspectives of different stakeholders (CD and NCGS community, restaurant managers/service providers and nutritionists).Design/methodology/approachA qualitative approach based on thematic analysis is adopted. The results of 32 semi-structured in-depth interviews reveal different stakeholders' perspectives in order to understand the various strategies.FindingsThe findings confirm the high level of consensus that the main food risk reducers are: travel information, staff training in safety assurance, legislation and risk prevention protocols. The findings also show significant limitations in the information offered by restaurants, organisations and tourist destinations and the negative repercussions on the tourist experience and the reputation on a particular destination.Practical implicationsThe results will help hospitality business managers and destination management organisations develop food risk reduction strategies to solve some of the most important food-related problems when people in this market segment travel.Originality/valueThis work contributes to the literature by providing a new framework on travel risk reduction strategies for people with specific food needs. The novelty of this research is mainly found in the study of risk reduction strategies related to the travel decision-making process for those with CD and NCGS from different perspectives.

The Impact of Destination Image on Tourist Behavior: Karbala as a Case Study

The destination image is regarded as one of the elements affecting visitors' choices in selecting tourist locations that satisfy their wants and aspirations in a way that corresponds to their expectations of such places. The destination image influences tourist behavior by stimulating tourist desires to travel and engage in tourist activities, as well as influencing that behavior in the travel decision-making process during the pre-trip, trip, and post-trip phases. The destination image is also linked to visitor satisfaction with regard to their appraisal of their travel experience and the extent to which that experience meets or comes near to their earlier expectations. Therefore, the current study looks at the image and personality of religious, tourist, and commercial brands, as well as how they connect to future tourist behavior. The study considered Karbala city, Iraq, as a case study. The study was based on the in-filed study technique, which was represented by a questionnaire that was delivered to the study sample, which consisted of seven first-class hotels in Karbala city, with 40 copies of the questionnaire handed over to the administrative personnel at these hotels. The study discovered that the cognitive image, emotional image, and destination personality all had different effects on global image and behavioral intentions for first-time and recurrent visitors. Additionally, the findings show that the qualitative remarks focused heavily on attractions, culture, and the environment. The practical consequences are explored, and destination personality and behavioral outcomes for first-time and recurrent visitors were designed and evaluated independently.