Effects of Self-congruence, Self-enhancement, and Delight on Tourists’ Patronage Intentions, and Moderating Roles of Personality Propensities

ABSTRACT

We investigate factors affecting tourists’ intentions to revisit and recommend a travel site they visited before. The results indicate that delight (i.e., holistic emotional evaluation), more so than satisfaction, determines revisit and referral intentions. We also find that delight is affected by the extent to which one perceives his/her travel experience to have engendered self-enhancement. The assessment of self-enhancement is significantly influenced by both real and ideal self-congruence judgments. In addition, we examine the roles of variety-seeking and the need for uniqueness on tourists’ patronage intentions. We find that the higher variety-seeking and the need for uniqueness, the more likely one will revisit and recommend the site he/she visited before.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-congruence
• self-enhancement
• delight
• revisit
• recommendation
• variety seeking
• need for uniqueness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).