Exploring the Relationship Between Tourists’ Emotional Experience, Destination Personality Perception, Satisfaction and Behavioral Intentions

Abstract

The relationship between tourists’ emotional experience and perception of destination brand personality, has not been empirically explored before. Moreover, there is a literature gap in understanding how emotional experience, destination personality, destination satisfaction, and behavioral intentions, interact together in one model. Based on this, the principal aim of this study is to analyze how tourists’ emotional experience affects the perception of destination personality traits, as well as how these two constructs relate to tourists’ satisfaction and behavioral intentions. In order to explore this, the survey was conducted on a sample of 203 domestic and international tourists, who have visited the city of Novi Sad, while Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied to test the hypothesized model. The results confirmed the positive role of emotional experience in shaping destination personality and destination satisfaction. Destination satisfaction and certain personality traits positively predicted behavioral intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed in the paper.