Wellness tourism has become a popular trend of tourism activity in the 21st century for people to meet the needs of wellness and leisure. As a sunrise industry, wellness tourism has great market potential and prospective future in China. Hainan, the only tropical island in China, has great advantages in developing wellness tourism. Hainan has a pleasant climate and picturesque scenery, its nature environment and unique features attract tourists from all over the world. Given the importance of the wellness tourism industry in Hainan, wellness tourist consumption behaviour needs to be further explored. However, there is a limited study in exploring the consumptive profiles of wellness tourists. In order to fill the gaps of the research in wellness tourism, this study chose wellness tourists as the research subject for the study of consumer behaviour to identify the needs of wellness tourists, factors influencing the tourist needs, and their degree of influence on the choice of wellness tourism. The aim of this research was to achieve the following objectives: (1) To identify the socio-demographic profiles of wellness tourists in Hainan; (2) To analyse the factors including attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, past behaviour, perception of the tourist destination and wellness lifestyle attributes that affect Chinese people’s travel intention of wellness tourism; (3) To test the relevance of the original TPB model and develop an extended TPB model (ETPB). The results showed that subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, past behaviour, perception of tourist destination and wellness lifestyle were significantly related to behavioural intention of wellness tourism. Perception of tourist destination was found to function as a mediating variable in the formation mechanism of travel intention of wellness tourism. In addition, the moderating effect of wellness lifestyle has also been tested and verified in the relationships between subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and travel intention of wellness tourism in the ETPB model. Surprisingly, attitude toward wellness tourism was found to exert no direct effect on travel intention of wellness tourism, yet it indirectly predicted travel intention through perception of tourist destination. Moreover, wellness lifestyle failed to moderate the relationship between attitude toward wellness tourism and travel intention
