“I deserve a break!”: how temporal landmarks and the perception of deservingness influence consumers’ travel motivation and intention

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the impact of temporal landmarks on consumers’ travel motivation and intention through three experimental studies. Results demonstrate that being reminded of public and personal temporal landmarks can boost consumers’ travel motivation, with the effect driven by consumers’ perception of deservingness. The effect of temporal landmarks on travel motivation was shown to be weakened when consumers were confronted with goal conflicts attributed internally to consumers themselves, but not those attributed externally to others. We provide evidence that perceptions of deservingness influence travel intention, and these perceptions are influenced by both temporal landmarks and goal conflicts that are internally attributed.

KEYWORDS:

• Temporal landmarks
• perception of deservingness
• goal conflict
• attribution theory
• travel motivation
• travel intention

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Pengcheng Scholar Program sponsored by Shenzhen Municipal Education Commission.