PERCEIVED SUBSTITUTABILITY OF VIRTUAL TOURISM: WILL CONSUMERS CONTINUE TO USE VIRTUAL TRAVEL PRODUCTS POST-PANDEMIC?
Location
Gran Canaria
Participation
Attend Online/Virtually
Type of Submission
Paper Presentation
Short Abstract
The tourism recovery in the post-pandemic era has attracted major attention from scholars, focusing on people’s potential travel intentions and behaviors to visit destinations physically. However, people’s behaviors of engaging in virtual tourism post-pandemic have received little attention, and its value as a substitute for direct traveling has been ignored. By treating the substitutability of virtual tourism as a subjective receptivity of consumers, this research aims to examine consumers’ perception of virtual tourism as a substitute for direct traveling and its relationship with their intention to travel physically or virtually post-pandemic. A positive relationship is hypothesized, and the moderation role of past adoption of virtual tourism is also examined. A sample of 331 responses was collected through MTurk and analyzed using linear regression models. The results showed that consumers’ higher perception of virtual tourism as a substitute would increase their intention to travel physically or virtually post-pandemic, with the intention to travel virtually much higher than the intention to travel physically. The moderation role of past adoption of virtual tourism is also validated, with people who adopted virtual tourism during the pandemic having reduced intention to travel physically and virtually post-pandemic. The results of this research lend both theoretical as well as practical implications to academia and the practitioners as to how to plan and market destination experience-based products.
PERCEIVED SUBSTITUTABILITY OF VIRTUAL TOURISM: WILL CONSUMERS CONTINUE TO USE VIRTUAL TRAVEL PRODUCTS POST-PANDEMIC?
Gran Canaria
The tourism recovery in the post-pandemic era has attracted major attention from scholars, focusing on people’s potential travel intentions and behaviors to visit destinations physically. However, people’s behaviors of engaging in virtual tourism post-pandemic have received little attention, and its value as a substitute for direct traveling has been ignored. By treating the substitutability of virtual tourism as a subjective receptivity of consumers, this research aims to examine consumers’ perception of virtual tourism as a substitute for direct traveling and its relationship with their intention to travel physically or virtually post-pandemic. A positive relationship is hypothesized, and the moderation role of past adoption of virtual tourism is also examined. A sample of 331 responses was collected through MTurk and analyzed using linear regression models. The results showed that consumers’ higher perception of virtual tourism as a substitute would increase their intention to travel physically or virtually post-pandemic, with the intention to travel virtually much higher than the intention to travel physically. The moderation role of past adoption of virtual tourism is also validated, with people who adopted virtual tourism during the pandemic having reduced intention to travel physically and virtually post-pandemic. The results of this research lend both theoretical as well as practical implications to academia and the practitioners as to how to plan and market destination experience-based products.
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/itsa/ITSA2022/ITSA2022/22