Booth Attractiveness: Scale Development and Model Testing from a Mental Budgeting Perspective

Given the importance of booth attractiveness at trade expositions, this study sets out to develop a scale measuring booth attractiveness (Study 1) and to examine its effectiveness in motivating attendees’ purchasing behavior (Study 2). Study 1 includes three steps: (1) item generation through a thorough review of the literature, focus group, and comments from experts, (2) item purification with exploratory factor analysis using 122 samples, and (3) reevaluating items with confirmatory factor analysis using 129 samples. A six-dimensional scale of booth attractiveness was developed in Study 1. Based on the theory of mental budgeting, Study 2 was conducted to examine the effects of booth attractiveness on the mechanism of attendees’ purchasing behavior using 323 samples. Results of Study 2 suggest that booth attractiveness could directly motivate impulse buying or indirectly through mental budgeting. Impulse buying, then, results in post-purchase guilt and anticipated satisfaction. Meanwhile, postpurchase guilt reduces anticipated satisfaction.

What is a Theme Park? A Synthesis and Research Framework

Theme parks have attracted extensive scholarly attention within and outside the tourism literature. These parks have been studied from various stances, yet a uniform definition and integrated framework remain lacking for theme park research and practice. Based on a comprehensive review and research synthesis, this article defines a theme park as a dedicated space featuring five main characteristics: thematic identity, closed space with controlled access, hybrid consumption, performative labor, and merchandising. This article further considers multidisciplinary lenses in theme park studies, particularly in terms of how these five characteristics can be assessed. A research framework covering four domains (industry, tourists/visitors, environment, and impacts) is accordingly proposed to inspire theoretical advances, identify research gaps, promote relevant research, and facilitate managerial practices. This article encourages scholars to move beyond current empirical confines and shape the interdisciplinary future of theme park tourism research.

Taking Stock: A Meta-Analysis of Work Engagement in the Hospitality and Tourism Context

Although a number of empirical studies on work engagement have been conducted in the context of hospitality and tourism, few efforts have been made to consolidate previous findings in this area. Hence, this article explores the current stage of work engagement studies and meta-analyses the relations of work engagement with its antecedents and outcomes in the hospitality and tourism context. Through a systematic review, 134 empirical studies (N = 43,043) published from 2008 to September 2020 were identified. Given that the findings include the trends within work engagement studies and the effect sizes and variabilities of associated relationships, this study contributes to the hospitality and tourism literature by providing a useful reference for future researchers. The findings are discussed in light of their theoretical and practical implications.

The Effects of Unfulfilled Preferential Treatment and Review Dispersion on Airbnb Guests’ Attitudes and Behavior

In sharing accommodation business such as Airbnb, while the provision of personalized amenities and services may seem like good business, hosts should be aware of the potential unintended consequences when they are not able to deliver what they promise. The present research examines how expectation gaps created by guest reviews interact with different types of preferential services to subsequently affect consumer behavior in the peer-to-peer accommodation economy. Grounded in attribution theory, this study offers new insights on customer responses to unfulfilled preferential treatment. The results suggest that in the condition of utilitarian services (e.g., airport transportation), participants in the low dispersion condition exhibited more negative attitudes, a lower level of repurchase intention, and a decreased willingness to write an online review. Conversely, in the condition of hedonic services (e.g., perform a talent show), expectation discrepancy did not result in different consumer evaluations across the dispersion conditions.

Is Your Food Organic? Examining the Role of Food Aesthetics in Restaurant Marketing

Many restaurants believe that an aesthetically pleasing food presentation can help attract customers and elevate their evaluations. Yet the effectiveness of expressive aesthetics and the psychological processes associated with its use are not well understood in hospitality research. This study adopts a consumer behavior lens to explore how expressive aesthetics affects consumers’ decision making about organic versus conventional food in the restaurant setting. Findings reveal that the expressive aesthetics strategy is effective when marketing conventional, nonorganic food; however, such a strategy decreases consumers’ purchase intentions when the food is described as organic. Furthermore, an investigation of the underlying psychological mechanism indicates that anticipated pleasure and food temptation serially mediate the impacts of expressive aesthetics and food type on purchase intention.

Overbooking as a Means to Manage Restaurant No-Shows and Cancellations: A Novel Model Extension

Newsvendor models have been developed to determine the optimal overbooking level of hotel rooms to manage no-shows and cancellations. This research note extends the newsvendor model to a restaurant context by taking into account the “stretched capacity” of restaurants to determine the optimal overbooking levels for restaurant seats. Data were collected from a restaurant in Taiwan to illustrate the model. The percentage of no-shows per day in this restaurant ranged from 11% to 16%. Utilizing its stretched capacity, the restaurant can overbook up to five more seats than the estimated number of no-shows. The extended model will be most suitable for restaurants that largely depend on reservations (rather than walk-ins), such as luxury or fine-dining restaurants. Directions for future research on restaurant overbooking are provided.

The Effects of Employer Branding on Value Congruence and Brand Love

This study examines the effect of employer brand on employees’ brand love by applying value congruence theory. A survey was conducted with employees of well-known hotel brands in South Korea. The results show that not all employer brand dimensions equally contribute to the formation of brand love. While economic, social, and development values positively influence brand love, interest value and application value did not affect brand love formation. Employees’ value congruence perceptions mediate this effect because employees could infer what values employers care about based on the benefits that a hotel brand offers. This study contributes to the literature by linking value congruence with employer branding and brand love. Based on our findings, hospitality managers can redesign all work activities and apply employer branding principles to reflect employment value to achieve employee’s brand love.

Does Financial Development Raise Tourism Demand? A Cross-Country Panel Evidence

This study examines the effects of bank and stock market development on three tourism demand indicators: number of tourist arrivals, expenditure to gross domestic product ratio, and expenditure per arrival. We analyze annual data spanning the period 1995-2018 for a sample of 207 countries. The theoretical contribution of this study is threefold: first, we assess a variety of financial development indicators; second, we employ cross-sectionally augmented distributed lags estimator that produces estimates robust to the dependence structure in the data; third, using data on a wide assortment of countries, we generalize the findings of several country-specific case studies. We observe that financial development affects both tourist arrivals and tourism expenditure positively. However, the gains in tourist arrivals are more significant relative to those in tourism expenditure. Furthermore, we find the responsiveness of tourism demand to financial development to vary with the income level.

Proposing a Cyclic Model of Tourist Decision Making: A Review and Integration of Behavioral and Choice-Set Models

Tourist decision studies focus on modeling decision-making behaviors, conceptualizing phases in decision making, and influential factors. Incorporating behavioral and choice-set model strategies, the current study proposes a generalizable cyclic model of tourist decision-making processes with a structure of repeatable behavioral stages integrated with relevant consideration sets. A “decision-making threshold” and “information loop limit” are introduced to control how and when the decision-making process starts or ends. The proposed model makes it possible to represent different decision-making styles by capturing the dynamic repetition of behavioral stages and the revision of consideration sets. The integration allows a novel approach for analyzing the formation of final decisions resulting from decision makers’ limited subjective evaluations and for studying decision rules as the combinations of “evaluation rule” and “information loop limit.” Practical implications and measures are provided for tourism practitioners to better understand and influence potential consumers. Future research questions are also suggested.

Travelers’ Psychological Comfort with Local Food Experiences and Place Attachment

Travelers’ engagement with local food at a foreign destination could be overwhelming and affect their overall travel experience. This study investigates the role travelers’ psychological comfort with local food plays in influencing the development of their place attachment to a destination. The study utilized survey data sampled from Korean and American travelers who had visited China and found that travelers’ place attachment is positively and significantly influenced by their psychological comfort with food, interaction with service providers, and atmospherics. The findings also reveal that Korean and American travelers differ in the degree to which comfort affects their place attachment. These and other findings of the study bring attention to the comfort factor of travelers’ food experience, thus complementing previous research that tended to emphasize the novelty value of local cuisines.