From Fear of Death to Travel Intention: Do Residential Tourism Clusters Matter?

Abstract

This study integrates Terror Management Theory with the Social Ecological Model to explain how mortality awareness (MA) shapes travel intention through two pathways: an adaptive meaning-making route and a maladaptive strain-based route. Using a survey experiment with US adults and hierarchical regression, structural equation modeling, and multi-group analysis, we show that MA increases travel intention by strengthening worldview affirmation and self-transcendence, whereas maladaptive coping suppresses intention. These effects are context-dependent. Residential tourism clusters—operationalized using the Location Quotient (LQ7) index—moderate the translation of psychological motives into behavioral intention. Transcendence has a stronger positive effect in highly clustered areas, adaptive coping is more influential in low-cluster contexts, and maladaptive coping is more deterrent in high-cluster environments. By embedding existential motivation within spatial context, this study extends Terror Management Theory and identifies transcendence as a key mechanism of travel behavior.