Journal of Travel Research

Innovation in tourism is increasingly driven by knowledge networks that span sectors and regions, yet their systemic dynamics remain underexplored. This conceptual paper applies a neo-Schumpeterian evolutionary economic geography lens to reframe how tourism knowledge networks are understood at macro-destination and extra-regional levels. Adopting a network-system perspective, it proposes a typology of tourism knowledge networks based on systemic qualities such as boundedness, coherence, and unified function. The paper advocates for a cross-sectoral, multi-destination knowledge network continuum as a more effective foundation for examining innovation processes in tourism. The study contributes a new framework for analyzing regional innovation systems in tourism and sets a research agenda emphasizing the importance of integrated, multi-scalar knowledge exchange in destination development.

Destination anthropomorphism has emerged as a significant promotional strategy for destination marketers, but how to effectively embed anthropomorphic elements in destination promotional videos remains unclear. Based on anthropomorphism theory and social presence theory, this study uses a mixed method approach combining empirical analysis and experiments to explore the effect and mechanism of destination anthropomorphism in videos on tourists’ travel intention. Specifically, the empirical analysis based on secondary data captured from TikTok indicates that anthropomorphic destinations can elicit greater tourists’ travel intention than non-anthropomorphic destinations in videos, particularly for warm destinations or videos with human elements. The results of scenario-based experiments reveal that this effect is mediated by social presence. The destination stereotype and human elements in videos play moderated mediating roles in these effects. This study provides theoretical implications for research on destination anthropomorphism in the context of new media and offers valuable insights for destination marketers in video marketing.

Examining crisis management from the tourist’s perspective is a little studied topic. Drawing upon signaling theory and regulatory focus theory, this study investigates the interplay between perceived destination crisis preparedness and sensitivity and compares their roles in influencing tourists’ decisions to switch destinations. The study investigates different types of crises, destinations, source markets, and tourist types. Three experimental studies were conducted. The results suggest tourists are most likely to switch where the perception of crisis preparedness is low or when crisis sensitivity is high. The issue of crisis preparedness has a greater impact. In certain contexts, tourists with a higher degree of risk tolerance are less concerned about crisis sensitivity, while those with a greater degree of destination congruence care more about destination crisis preparedness. The study advances the knowledge of tourism crisis management from the perspective of the tourist. Destination marketing organizations should convey their crisis preparedness more effectively.

Tourism represents a contributor to local economic conditions as well as to fund raising for heritage preservation. However, concerns related to excessive flows of tourists have been raised from many parts. In fact, overtourism can lead to social, cultural, environmental, and economic costs. This is especially true in cultural destinations. Therefore, touristic destinations both benefit from tourism-related advantages and are subject to the associated drawbacks. This work aims at investigating the sustainability of tourism flows in Italian municipalities from the residents’ perspective by jointly analyzing localization benefits and costs for residents -among which tourism is both a cost and a benefit. Particularly, the work uses a neoclassical economic approach to look for a social optimum in tourism flows, defined as the level that would guarantee the optimal allocation of tourists among Italian municipalities. This enables us to identify municipalities encountering overtourism or undertourism, according to our model. The research is deepened by considering local specificities in terms of heritage endowment and cultural touristic vocation.

Encouraging air travelers’ participation in voluntary carbon offsetting (VCO) remains challenging. Drawing on dual-process and social influence theories, this study investigates whether heuristic cues can optimize message design for online carbon offsetting. Through sequentially designed randomized national surveys and psychophysiological experiments, results revealed that messages leveraging primacy-recency, anchoring, and foot-in-the-door techniques are most effective in increasing carbon offsetting intentions. Findings indicated that women tend to be rational carbon offset purchasers while older men are more likely to be heuristic-induced purchasers. The experimental study further reveals that transparency and efficacy messages with statistical information, rather than heuristic cues, are the most effective approaches in raising respondents’ attention to carbon offsetting details. Practical communication strategies such as providing readable and accurate information are proposed to promote participation in aviation VCO programs.

Social media travel blogs have emerged as a pivotal tool in tourism marketing, yet users’ emotions in this context remain underexplored. To fill the research gap in social media-induced envy, this study employs scenario-based experiments and semi-structured interviews to investigate the impact of benign versus malicious envy toward bloggers on users’ travel intentions. The findings reveal that benign envy (vs. malicious envy) fosters parasocial interaction and enhances the affective destination image, thereby influencing travel intentions positively. The popularity of a travel blogger’s post as perceived by social media users eliminated the envy effect. Additionally, users’ social inclusion (vs. exclusion) on social media was found to reduce the negative effect of malicious envy on travel intentions. Destination marketers should closely monitor bloggers’ unfavorable social media behavior, and social media platforms may advise travel bloggers on how to design and implement content generation strategies to avoid instilling malicious envy among media users.

This study explores the unique role of Buddhist monks in spiritual tourism through the 5V model of value creation. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 22 Vietnamese Buddhist monks and 15 spiritual tour operators. Through thematic analysis, key insights emerged regarding the monks’ roles in shaping spiritual values along each dimension of the 5V ontological framework, encompassing Value Proposition, Value Segment, Value Configuration, Value Network, and Value Capture. The findings underscore Buddhist monks’ significance in crafting value propositions through spiritual guidance and enlightenment. Their understanding of diverse spiritual seekers and adeptness in configuring spiritual experiences were rooted in the Buddhist principles of interconnectedness and compassion. The study highlights monks’ pivotal role within the broader value network in facilitating meaningful connections between travelers, destinations, and spiritual realms. Additionally, the study elucidates the mechanisms of value capture, shedding light on how monks navigate the intersection of spirituality and tourism to sustainably co-create value.

The emergence of short-term lease platforms has disrupted the global tourism and hospitality sector, with implications not only for traditional hotels, but entire destinations. Despite numerous studies on the effects of short-term leases on hotel performance, limited research has sought to advance the conceptual understanding of local-level countermeasures employed by hotels. Consequently, this research critically examines the competitive entry barriers employed by incumbent hotels to deter short-term leases, with an emphasis on preemption and brand loyalty strategies. Using a panel analysis and zero-inflated multilevel Negative Binomial Regression, findings reveal that increasing the proportion of branded hotels effectively deters short-term lease entries, while quality concentration also reduces market entry rates. Findings articulate effective strategies for hotels and policymakers to protect market share and maintain community stability in the face of evolving sector dynamics. Future research should examine the diverse strategies traditional hospitality providers can leverage to counteract short-term lease market entry. Also available in Chinese. See Supplemental Material for details.

Although dynamic pricing strategies in the tourism and hospitality industry have been widely studied, there is limited information on how individual attributes affect responses to price changes. Accordingly, this study investigates the interaction between an individual’s temporal perspective (linear or cyclical) and the direction of price change cues (increase or decrease) on immediate purchase intention. The results of five scenario-based experiments reveal that decreasing (increasing) prices, paired with a cyclical (linear) perspective, could lead to higher immediate purchase intention. The results further demonstrate the mediating effect of predicted future price trends and the moderating roles of the duration of comparison interval and the magnitude of changes. This study assists practitioners in better matching price changes and temporal perspectives to promote consumers’ immediate purchase intentions.

Within the Experience Economy framework, this study analyzes how smart technologies impact the tourist experience of a pre-stay virtual tour and how the individual’s cognitive style moderates this relationship. A quasi-experimental design entails a single treatment variable—technology-type—with two levels: (1) virtual tour with virtual reality (VR) and (2) virtual tour with intelligent virtual environment (IVE), using a static virtual tour (featuring neither VR nor AI) as a control group. The results show that (a) the virtual tour with VR or IVE exerts a positive and significant effect on the pre-stay tourist experience; (b) the individual’s verbal–visual cognitive style exerts a positive and significant impact on the experience; and (c) the effect of technology-type on the tourist experience is moderated by the individual’s cognitive style in the case of the virtual tour with VR. However, no such moderating effect occurs in the virtual tour with the IVE.

Hotel consumers’ unrealistic optimism leads them to postpone their bookings until the last minute, expecting a better price. However, the frequent use of last-minute deals can impact a hotel’s profitability, and little is known about how to reduce consumers’ unrealistic optimism to encourage earlier bookings. This research examines strategies to reduce hotel bookers’ unrealistic optimism to promote early bookings using three experimental designs. Study 1 demonstrates that hotel consumers’ price change predictions are nearly identical to predictions based on best-case situations. The findings of Study 2 indicate that popularity cues motivate consumers to book early, but only if they have the option to pay later. Study 3 suggests that when a hotel’s price is relatively high, supply-driven scarcity cues are more effective than demand-driven cues in convincing consumers not to postpone bookings. Taken together, these findings provide important insights into developing an operational marketing strategy to encourage advance bookings.

This research responds to challenges in promoting more sustainable responses among travelers. We posit that the commitment-and-consistency principle is a potent driver of more sustainable codes of conduct. Four experiments with more than 3,000 participants tested the impact of active (vs. passive or no) commitment on travelers’ likelihood to make sustainable choices at airports. A positive effect of active commitment emerged regarding travelers’ likelihood of making sustainable choices, with their consistency effort mediating this effect. Cultural belonging moderated this interplay, with active commitment being particularly powerful in individualistic (vs. collectivist) cultures. These findings contribute to commitment literature, offering actionable insights for airport managers, environmental NGOs, and policymakers alike. Specifically, our findings document that the cost-effective reliance on active commitment at commercial airport facilities boosts travelers’ general choice likelihood of sustainable options by roughly 50% to 75% compared to the existing (no commitment) status quo across settings and study paradigms.

Attractive nature-based tourism (NBT) locations for tourists may not translate into attractive work locations for employees. Therefore, we use the therapeutic landscapes concept and extend the person-environment fit theory to encompass a person-location fit. In Study 1, we interviewed employees and identified what locational characteristics, or lack thereof, might lead to intention to quit their jobs. Three distinct themes emerged—lack of infrastructure, lack of interaction opportunities, and lack of consumption opportunities—offering an explanation for high employee turnover in nature-based tourism. In Study 2, we introduced a locational characteristic construct and, using structural equation modeling, found that inferior locational characteristics are positively associated with the employee’s intention to quit their job; and that this relationship, mediated by the employee’s intention to quit the location, is a better explanation than job satisfaction. Our findings point out new directions for researchers, organizations and policymakers.

Maintaining tourism competitiveness is crucial for destinations’ long-term success. However, studies often lack longitudinal analyses that capture the evolving determinants of tourism competitiveness in both domestic and international markets. Taking China as a case study, this research introduces an innovative framework that integrates spatiotemporal machine learning with multimodal big data to examine dynamic factors influencing domestic and international tourism competitiveness. Several findings emerge: (1) overall, online popularity is essential for domestic tourism competitiveness, whereas the natural environment underpins international tourism competitiveness; (2) temporally, tourism infrastructure, government support, and online tourist perception are becoming more critical for tourism competitiveness over time, while tourism attractions’ role is waning; and (3) developed destinations are increasingly leveraging tourism infrastructure to enhance competitive advantage, and less-developed areas are benefiting more from online visibility. This research further contextualizes the dynamic nature of tourism competitiveness and offers strategies for sustainable tourism development. Also available in Chinese. See Supplemental Material for details.