The impact of tourists' emotions on satisfaction and destination loyalty – an integrative moderated mediation model: tourists' experience in Switzerland
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights
ISSN: 2514-9792
Article publication date: 25 August 2020
Issue publication date: 29 September 2020
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of tourists' emotional responses toward a particular destination on tourists' satisfaction and destination loyalty. Perceived quality adds as a moderator variable.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted a quantitative data collection method, with distributing the questionnaire to 346 tourists of 43 nationalities in four main tourist attractions in Switzerland. The structural equation modeling approach and bootstrapping technique were used to empirically test the study hypotheses.
Findings
The results confirm the negative impact of negative emotions. The mediating role of the tourists' satisfaction was documented. As expected, perceived quality dampened the negative effect of negative emotions on tourists' satisfaction. However, surprisingly, it does not serve as a moderator in the relationship between positive emotions and tourists' satisfaction.
Practical implications
This study resulted in a set of practical marketing recommendations. Tourism marketers are encouraged to keep positive emotions high among tourists, aimed to increase their satisfaction toward the destination and revisit it again in the future and also, pay more attention to the quality of the destination as an essential tool to reduce the impact of negative emotions.
Originality/value
Many studies in tourism literature studied associations between positive emotions and tourists' behavior. The present study is drawing more attention to negative emotions. In addition, this study tries to address the gap in the tourism literature regarding the modified impact of perceived quality on the relationship between emotions and tourists' satisfaction.
Keywords
Citation
Al‐Msallam, S. (2020), "The impact of tourists' emotions on satisfaction and destination loyalty – an integrative moderated mediation model: tourists' experience in Switzerland", Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights, Vol. 3 No. 5, pp. 509-528. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTI-11-2019-0126
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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