A construal level view of contemporary heritage tourism

Psychological distance is “a subjective experience that something is close or far away from the self, here, and now” (Trope & Liberman 2010, p. 440). This research investigates heritage tourism from the perspective of Construal Level theory, which postulates that individuals mentally represent objects and events by adopting either low or high construal levels. We show that heritage tourism leads tourists to adopt a higher psychological distance and therefore a higher construal level. In turn, this higher construal negatively affects destination loyalty and perceived uniqueness. However, authenticity and engagement moderate the heritage–construal relationship, counterbalancing the higher psychological distance induced by heritage. We explore these relationships in two studies focusing on contemporary heritage sites. This further allows to compare visitors’ mental representations of the experience, based on their memory type. The paper concludes by addressing implications for theory and practice

It’s Not Just a Game: Virtual Edgework and Subjective Well-Being in E-Sports

The authors investigate subjective well-being in the context of e-sports (competitive video games). They adopt the theoretical lenses of virtual edgework theory, a recent adaptation of edgework theory from physical to digital contexts. Sports have long been used as a tool to improve subjective well-being. The research question is whether e-sports lead to well-being, as their physical sport counterparts do, and through what psychological mechanisms. The authors answer through a conceptual model of moderated mediation tested on hundreds of e-sports players. They also address the role of privacy concerns, as e-sports pose several potential threats to players' privacy that could hinder players' achievement of well-being. Findings suggest that virtual edgework provides a useful theoretical perspective for understanding consumers' behavior in digital environments. They also show that e-sports can lead to well-being by achieving feelings of self-enhancement under the positive moderation of perceived control over the digital environment and the negative moderation of privacy concerns

"THE ROLE OF GREEN EXPERIENTIAL QUALITY, SATISFACTION, AND AUTHENTICITY ON TOURISTS PRO-ENVIRONMENTAL INTENTION"

This research investigates the impact of green experiential quality, experiential satisfaction, and perceived authenticity on tourists’ pro-environmental behavior. Based on an extension of the service quality framework, experiential quality related to green practices represents an extension that goes beyond the tourists’ evaluation of the functional attributes provided by the hospitality sector and the hotel suppliers. In fact, it reflects the tourists’ affective response to their desired socio-psychological benefits linked to the ability of the hospitality offering to consider the specific consumers’ sustainable needs. The preliminary findings are based on 300 green hotel customers and data are analyzed through a moderated-mediated analysis conducted via PROCESS macro for SPSS. Our results confirm the role of green experiential quality in driving the tourist towards pro-environmental behavior during the tourism experience. It does so via the mediation role played by the consequent experiential satisfaction deriving from the hotel green practices quality. Surprisingly, our findings found no support for the moderating role of authenticity in fostering the relationship between green quality and perceived satisfaction. Our study suggests valuable insights for both managers and scholars related to the antecedents of pro-environmental behavior deriving from hotel green practices

Generation Z active sports tourism: A conceptual framework and analysis of intention to revisit

Action sports events are part of a multibillion-dollar industry supported by prominent sponsors-such as Red Bull, GoPro, and Samsung, among others-and individuals engaging with these events through various roles. In fact, the International Extreme Sports Festival (FISE) of Montpellier in France attracts around 600,000 spectators, 1800 athletes, and 400,000 digital followers (VoGo [2019]. VoGo at the FISE World Series Montpellier 2019. Retrieved August 30, 2020, from https://www.vogo-group.com/en/at-the-fise-montpellier-2019/). Nowadays, the average age of athletes and spectators is below 25 years for BMX, skateboarding, and wakeboarding events (Statista. (2018). Number of participants in wakeboarding in the United States from 2006 to 2017 (in millions). Retrieved April 29, 2019, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/191,342/participants-in-wakeboarding-in-the-us-since-2006/), thus making Generation Z the key market for action sports events. This chapter will explore what drives Generation Z participation as sport tourists in action sports events. Specifically, based on underpinnings emerging from recent literature of psychology and marketing, this chapter aims at assessing how Generation Z's intention participate in extreme sports event is shaped by their need for intense sensations, desire for mastering skills, and feelings of self-enhancement, together with the image participants hold of a particular event. In doing so, a conceptual model is proposed and tested, and outputs indicate Generation Z participation in an international action-sport event. Results will offer insights into key marketing aspects related to Generation Z's revisit intention to action sport events, and will provide useful managerial implications

Unpacking the privacy paradox of consumers: A psychological perspective

This study explicates why consumers allow the unconditional collection and processing of personal data while doubting data privacy. A process model addressing this privacy paradox is consequently designed through multidisciplinary research. Altogether, two online studies concur that certain factors may mitigate the negative effect of risk perception concerning data privacy during the personal data disclosure process. Hence, we examine the impact of the privacy paradox based on the literature on mental accounting, which describes interactions between present and future costs and benefits. In this context, consumer behavior is deciphered via analysis of four key variables, namely, the mental accounting of privacy-related risks, consumer involvement, type of perceived benefit regarding the specific purchase/transaction, and consumer familiarity

Untying the knot: Drivers of the intention to downgrade the relationship in B2B service contexts

We investigate a negative outcome of the relationship continuum – a business customer’s intention to downgrade the relationship with a financial service provider. By adopting complexity theory and using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), we provide six combinations of causal conditions that can affect the customer’s intention to downgrade an industrial relationship. Based on a unique dataset of five-hundreds questionnaires, we provide combinations of trust, satisfaction, commitment, loyalty, and relationship age that lead a customer to downgrade its relationship with a seller. Complexity theory and QCA allow us to highlight more intricate relationships among the predictors of a relationship’s trajectory, challenging the notion that a business relationship must always concomitantly possess all virtuous characteristics as a shield from downgrading. Sub-group analyses support that the successful configurations of trust, satisfaction, commitment, loyalty, and relationship age may depend on the number and size of a firm’s partners

Faster! More! Better! Drivers of upgrading among participants in extreme sports events

Merchandising expenditures in extreme sports are a multi-billion dollar market, but contrary to most traditional sports revenue comes mainly from active consumers-athletes rather than from (passive) spectators as in traditional sport. We focus on consumers participating in extreme sports to identify the determinants of their intention to upgrade the relationship with the sports brand. A model is developed that addresses psychological theories of extreme behaviors and voluntary risk-seeking on one side, but also marketing drivers of consumers' upgrading on the other side. The model is tested on 580 active participants in two major extreme sports events. The results show that consumers-athletes upgrading is driven not only by loyalty-related marketing variables, but also, and significantly, by self-enhancement-related factors that are specific to the psychology of extreme individuals. This study contributes to the understanding of the determinants of extreme consumers' intention to upgrade, and provides important implications for future research and managers

A text-analysis approach of push and pull motivations in heritage festivals. Evidence from three Italian cases

Festivals are gaining an increasing relevance in the tourism sector (Getz, 2008), testified by a constant development of the offering, throughout the last thirty years (e.g., Gursoy, Spangenberg, and Rutherford 2006; Yang, Gu, and Cen 2011; Mason and Paggiaro 2012; Akhoondnejad 2016). Festivals have been also long recognized as a very effective tool for the sustainable development of entire regions (e.g., enhancing social cohesion and pride of local communities, see Saleh and Ryan 1993; Getz, 2008; Grappi and Montanari 2011; Lee 2014). Given this raising importance, marketing and tourism literature has increasingly focused on exploring festival contexts; visitors\u2019 motivations have received considerable attention (e.g., Xiang & Petrick 2006; Lee et al. 2004). This work contributes to the debate on festival visitors\u2019 motivation, by applying the push/pull factors framework to the specific context of small, local heritage festivals. A multiple case study is presented. Two contributions are provided: first, by exploring how the push/pull framework works for small, local heritage festivals, pointing out the actual relevance of the cultural and the location (pull) factors over more subjective, inner visitor motives (push); secondly, text analysis approaches have been used as research tools, developing an original framework of analysis