Tourists ’ interpretations toward tourism destinations: viewpoint to apply locus of control theory

Purpose – Studying tourist behavior provides the privilege of diverging in the competition between destinations to attract tourists. Previous studies have explored the effects of tourist behavior on brand satisfaction, attachment and loyalty. However, there is a lack of studies that investigated the intuition behind shaping tourist behavior. To address this issue, this study aims to contribute to providing a viewpoint to apply locus of control (LOC) theory in the tourism context. LOC studies how individuals believe in controlling their feelingsandjudgment toward events.


Introduction
In recent years, research in tourism behavior has grown substantially since studying tourist behavior as an academic field. Tourism scholars have extensively studied tourism behavior to determine the tourism demand and predict future tourism demand to tourism destinations. Hence, it is crucial to explore the processes of forming tourist behavior and its impacts on visiting intention to destinations (Abay et al., 2017). That requires extensive investigation about the locus of control (LOC) theory as a dimension of attribution theory; attribution theory, especially the LOC dimension, provides conceptual and empirical evidence of how people manifest their behaviors to people or events around them (Jackson, 2019). For instance, people with an internal LOC see their ability and efforts as an outcome of their own behavior and self-confidence (Twenge et al., 2004). Whereas people with an external LOC see external factors affect their behaviors (e.g. social circumstances, powerful others and chances) (Hoffmann and Post, 2014). The LOC theory also has a vital role in decision-making processes (Churchill et al., 2020). In LOC theory, people are characterized by providing contributory explanations for events that they faced. They consider more about reason than results of events or causes (Douglass et al., 2019;Weiner, 2000;Zhu and Meyers-Levy, 2009). Therefore, the LOC is individuals' beliefs and interpretation about their causes in different situations (Eslami et al., 2020). People with an internal LOC ascribe positive events to their own effort and self-achievement (Twenge et al., 2004). In contrast, the external LOC occurs when the occurrence of an event is believed to be a function of factors out of one's control, such as fortune and chance .
Moreover, LOC theory is important in predicting consumers' satisfaction (Galvin et al., 2018;Jacob et al., 2020;Qiu et al., 2012;Tse et al., 2002) or dissatisfaction (Mao et al., 2009;Qiu et al., 2012) about services (Tse et al., 2002) which in turn determines their postconsumption behaviors such as word of mouth (WOM) (Ma et al., 2018). However, there is a prominent gap in the tourism literature that focused on tourists' LOC, whether internal and/ or external, in decision-making to (re)visit a tourism destination. Also, there is a gap in evaluating tourists' LOC in interpreting different events, whether positive and/or negative in tourist destinations. Therefore, this paper provides a pioneering approach to evaluate the dynamics that form a tourist's LOC to make decisions to visit and interpret tourism destinations. The study uses VOS views software by collecting random samples from booking.com to provide the most prominent themes that affect tourists' LOC. For example, behavioral intentions and perceptions (Cole and Scott, 2004), or self-esteem (Prayag et al., 2013), and destination image with destination brand traits are the most prominent themes that affect tourists' LOC (Alexander et al., 2020;Huang and Hsu, 2009). Additionally, this study will provide a new viewpoint about the antecedents and consequences of tourists' LOC for making decisions to visit and interpret tourism destinations.
2. Literature review 2.1 Locus of control as an important dimension of attribution theory Attribution theory suggests that psychological interferes and interpretations are a mirror for the physical one. When people tend to judge events, they begin to question the cause of these events. Besides, they ask about the relation between the cause-and-effect process (Jackson, 2019). When people internally judge someone or an event (dispositional attribution), they ascribe people's behaviors, or event causes to peoples' intentions or event organizers (e.g. desires) (Abay et al., 2017). While people who externally judge someone or an event (situational attribution) ascribe people's behaviors or event causes to external circumstances (e.g. bad weather) (Churchill et al., 2020). Dispositional and situational attribution are not related to each other; they are different ; changing in situational attribution is not obligatory to be accompanied by changes in situational attribution. Thus, these different judgments play a significant role in shaping individual behavior (Douglass et al., 2019). Hence, attribution can be defined as what people recognize as the reason behind their attitudes toward events.

Locus of control as significant attribution theory dimension
Attribution theory suggests that customers make judgments about cause-and-effect relationships that influence their consequent emotions, mindsets and behaviors based on three dimensions of causal attributions: locus: who is responsible for actions (internal causes vs external causes); control: here, people ask themselves a question whether the responsible person for that action can control it or not; and stability: here, the cause is ascribed as if it is likely to recur or not. All previous dimensions influence behavioral responses to services or brands (e.g. tourism brands) (Eslami et al., 2020).
The LOC dimension has the most significant impact on behavioral regulation because it influences retrospective beliefs (e.g. prior beliefs, experiences, traditions, etc.), which have the priority to affect the behavioral interpretations of brands .

Locus of control types
The LOC theory provides conceptual and empirical evidence of how consumers manifest their behaviors to people or events around them. For instance, people with an internal LOC see their ability and efforts as an outcome of their own behavior and self-confidence. Whereas people with an external LOC see external factors affect their behaviors such as social circumstances, powerful others, staff bad behavior and chances (Galvin et al., 2018).
Thus, scholars have undertaken to classify the LOC into two models. Firstly, the independence model assumes that the internal LOC has become more acceptable over the past 40 years. Because of people's ability to control their causes now than they did before (e.g. travel is quite available for all social categories and technology presents endless choices for services, varieties of communication and entertainment) (Groth et al., 2019). People also have the freedom to manage their lives and make their own decisions. That is because of a lack of restricted social rules and etiquette as before (Karkoulian et al., 2016). Moreover, prejudice about gender or sexual orientation has declined. All these assumptions imply that people have become more biased to an internal LOC in their beliefs over time, contributing to widespread positive feelings (or positive WOM) (Twenge et al., 2004).
Secondly, the alienation model assumed that the external LOC has become more applicable over time because of the tendency to blame one's troubles or (failure) on external powers (Twenge et al., 2004). This model reflects the distrust and alienation of modern generations because of the negative social trends conducted by increased media on 24-h news. Consequently, if any negative results occur, people will ascribe these events to negative social trends, contributing to widespread negative feelings (or negative WOM) (Camilleri, 2017). The alienation model has two external LOC: chance control, whereby people do not have any power to influence it (e.g. luck, weather and fate). Secondly, powerful control whereby people can influence it (Hampson et al., 2021).
This study assumes that both internal and external LOC could be excited within individuals, but it depends mainly on the situation. For example, imagine that a tourist is going to a party at a tourism destination. This party requires formal clothes; here, the person cannot control (external LOC) the event owing to restrictive rules and etiquette (Jiang et al., 2020). So, the person has a negative internal LOC and ascribes the causes of external causes with an external LOC. On the contrary, if the same person is free to wear what they want, the person can control his judgment (internal LOC) about what they want to wear or about the event. So, the person feels high self-control with positive internal LOC (Hampson et al., 2021).

Locus of control as a dominant for determining information risks
Tourist LOC in the planning stage to visit a tourism destination is affected by the information amount about the destination (Aliperti and Cruz, 2019). On the one hand, sufficient information about the destination helps tourists form internal prior satisfaction with a high positive internal LOC (Jackson, 2019). On the other hand, Narangajavana et al. (2017) suggested that consumers begin to use different interpretation strategies during experiencing unverified information and/ or information shortage. Tourists in this situation are more likely to ascribe information shortage to tourism service providers with an external LOC. So, tourists broadly seek information with alternatives because information asymmetry (information shortage) negatively influences tourism brands' attribution processes (García-Milon et al., 2020). Additionally, consumers with contradictory information have little chance of forming decisions (Elgaaïed-Gambier et al., 2020). This occurs because in case of information confusion or uncertain reviews about services; consumers (here tourists) start to form negative perceptions and ascribe these conflicts to the service providers' inefficiency (Qiu et al., 2012).
Moreover, according to attribution theory, information risk while taking decisions leads to blaming service providers with external ascription (Toti et al., 2021). An external LOC influences this external ascription (Toti et al., 2021) because information asymmetry leads to little chances to make well decisions (Toti et al., 2021) and negatively influences the attribution processes about services .
Therefore, both LOC types and models play a crucial role in tourists' decision-making under uncertainty and risks (Toti et al., 2021) to visit the destination or evaluate the destination and build destination brand attachment.

Methodology
The study methodology relies on content analysis for tourists' reviews about their holidays at hotels, camps and resorts obtained from booking.com. The study methodology relies on three stages.
The first stage is choosing the appropriate methodology. The study finds that content analysis is suitable for the main scope of research because content analysis is a significant relevant tool to distinguish changes within tourists' reviews (Choi et al., 2007). The study considers that all raw data coding is qualitative within the context of texts are, in essence, qualitative, even if texts are transformed into counted numbers (Drisko and Maschi, 2016). However, content analysis quantitative techniques help analyze the frequencies of coded data (Choi et al., 2007). By comparing visual information to examine how the subcategories differ within the tourists' reviews.
Using content analysis to investigate tourists reviews about different events at holidays makes sense have high validity and reliability because: the content analysis could be used for any period of time, considerably beyond the live people availability to interview (Krippendorff, 2018); the content analysis avoids any changes in the individuals' reflections and perceptions across the course of individuals lifetime (Heslinga et al., 2018). Thus, applying content analysis to evaluate the tourists' reviews during holidays is suitable because the content analysis retains temporal and spatial tourists' reviews. This help to capture tourists' essence about self-controlling during holidays (Camprubí and Coromina, 2016).
The second stage is withdrawing 700 random reviews from booking.com; the reason behind choosing this website is that it is considered one of the most popular online travel platforms globally (Mellinas and Martin-Fuentes, 2021). It provides an extensive database collecting millions of reviews worldwide accommodations and holidays that academics and tourism destination managers have widely depend on enhancing their services through the past decade (Borges-Tiago et al., 2021).
The third stage of the study relies on using VOS viewer (vosviewer.com) software to capture the most frequent words that help fathom the essence behind tourists' interpretations toward different events at destinations. These words are clarified according to LOC theory as antecedents and consequences of tourists' LOC.
To ensure the validity of the observational study, the study pays attention to Lee et al.'s (2021) recommendation to design a well and accurate observational study. Moreover, the study considers online review texts to assure consistency regarding the review text with internal homogeneity and external homogeneity. So, the data set can consist of all content related to a specific topic within a specified time frame (London et al., 2017) or by extracting the glossaries that can serve the study's objectives (Li et al., 2017).

Findings and discussion (themes and viewpoint)
4.1 First themes: behavioral intentions, distance, destination image and perceptions as tourists' locus of control antecedents Choosing tourists' behavior intentions as starting run-in forming a LOC is very important because behaviors and LOC are two faces of the same coin (Jackson, 2019); people ascribe their behavioral intentions in terms of internal LOC (e.g. needs, desires, wishes, motivations, etc). or with an external LOC (e.g. social bonds, customs, traditions, external powers, etc.) (Churchill et al., 2020). Behavioral intentions are identified as a vital metric to assess the tourism destination expansion (Prayag et al., 2013). Thus, behavioral intentions are considered a dependent and consistent variable to understand decision-making procedures to form the LOC to tourism destinations (Loi et al., 2017). Scholars in the tourism field have attempted to investigate the reasons behind forming tourists' LOC behavior. For instance, scholars have shaded highlights on the destination distance (Jackman et al., 2020) because distance influences tourists' LOC level; short-haul tourists (vs long-haul) have a high (vs low) level of internal LOC because tourist feels confident that they know more about the destination in terms of approximate countries. This confidence is because of lower cultural differences between neighbors' countries (Xue and Zhang, 2020), influencing positive destination image (Hwang et al., 2020).
The destination image and culture distance depend on destination perceptions (Thomson et al., 2005) to perceive positive experiences without increasing self-confidence and positive ascriptions with positive internal LOC.
For example, following tourists' reviews on the Booking website, one tourist has asked: "When is the best time to visit Alaska for the first time"?
The tourist here wanted to create a perception about the destination to have positive experiences and judge the destination. In this case, the tourist has low LOClow selfconfidence in terms of information shortageso he strives to ask for more information about Alaska before visiting it. Surprisingly, one respondent mentioned that "The first thing is to set your priorities and start from there; what other activities would you like to see and do?" The previous travelers tried to help the potential tourist with enough questions to build a high perception and form a destination image before arrival. He answered that he had to ask for more information if he wanted to control his trip (high LOC), especially if he came from a long distance (long-haul distance). So, he mentioned: "The more information you can provide, the more experts are here to help you." Therefore, apparently, that perception and destination image and distance (whether long-haul or short-haul) play a crucial role in forming tourists' LOC.
Regarding the previous example, tourists' perceptions mainly are outcomes of emotions; emotions are a significant determinant of LOC (Thomson et al., 2005). Powerful emotions with high LOC strongly influence satisfaction which occurs when tourists positively attribute events to internal LOC (Jackson, 2019). Thus, it leads people to think about "why" they positively feel toward destinations (Ellen et al., 2006); this is a crucial indicator of tourists' perceptions about destinations (Gnoth, 1997), especially perception with wellknowledge about destinations (Pung et al., 2020). Tourists with a high level of knowledge about destinations tend to remain the positive LOC about destinations (Lu et al., 2016). When a person has a huge amount of information and knowledge, it helps them form selfconfidence with high internal LOC. They make well decisions to visit destinations (Pung et al., 2020) because of the positive perception of the destination image.
But what is the role of LOC here toward destination image? Image as a mental stamp is mainly affected by tourists' perception; this person's perception indicates a general tendency to form impressions about places. Either indirectly, perceptions require more information or direct perceptions and require no more than another person's vision (Tseng et al., 2015). Both types of a person's perception provide a basis upon which subsequent LOC (internal or external). Here, in high perception (vs low), tourists form a high (vs low) internal LOC. Then making decisions will be on the positive (vs the negative) side to visit destinations (Elgaaïed-Gambier et al., 2020).
Once tourists decide to visit the destination, and before the actual visit, tourists as consumers associate their self-image with destination traits as behavioral attribution (Afshardoost and Eshaghi, 2020). Destination and services are marketed like products; any tourism destination aims to motivate visitors to consider it over the other entertainment options. If the place is well known (with a high level of awareness), it could recognize as a brand or place branding (Pike, 2009;Zavattaro et al., 2015). Also, it helps in facilitating tourists' interpretations of events that happen in the destination with a high positive LOC (Jackson, 2019). So, studying self-esteem with destination traits will be suitable to understand LOC precisely.

Second themes: individual self-esteem, residents, awareness and information as tourists' locus of control antecedents
People ascribe destination events to control their self-esteem (Kavaratzis and Hatch, 2013). Self-esteem depends on self-trust to make the correct decision to positively experience services (Kavaratzis and Hatch, 2013;Zhao et al., 2017). Trust behavior stimulates the internal LOC, which positively influences curiosity to engage and attempt new experiences in destinations with positive attribution. Positive attribution toward destinations before actual visiting to destinations is affected by services values (Hultman et al., 2021) about the destinations. Another point of view reveals that self-esteem with brand traits is related more to the stakeholders and residents (Zenker et al., 2017). Hankinson (2004) as well Alexander et al. (2020) have argued that tourist's self-esteem to have positive experiences at destination brands depends on the efficient relationship between tourism stakeholders, residents (Zenker et al., 2017) and tourists (Sadeque et al., 2020). When tourists expect that they will have positive experiences with residents, they feel self-confidence and ascribe this confidence to their ability to deal with other cultures, this according to LOC theory helps in spreading positive WOM. Then they start to think that they may visit the destination because of their positive self-esteem to deal with stakeholders and residents with different cultures at destinations.
For example, another tourist's question on the Booking website: the Maldives vs Mauritius vs Fiji vs French Bulli vs Bali?! In this type of question, tourists tend to ask general questions about many destinations to link their perceptions, self-esteem and desires to the best destination features. The answer for this question from previous tourists' experiences reveals three main aspects: the perceived value that would be expected to gain in destinations by mentioning that one destination has "got those gorgeous overwater bungalows and snorkeling"; the prospective residents whom the tourist met at the destination when mentioning "but it's a strict Muslim country with foreigners kept apart from the native population"; and the previous WOM reviews "look at the Top Questions on this Forum which has topics on the Philippines and some of the other destinations you mention." Accordingly, the intention will no longer happen without the cognitive component of awareness (Konecnik and Gartner, 2007) with destination familiarity (Nadeau et al., 2008). Undoubtedly, destination familiarity provides tourists with sufficient information to make decisions to visit the destinations (Horng et al., 2012). This sufficient information increases positive judgment and LOC toward destination image to form prominent and positive experiences Meng and Cui, 2020) at the destination brands (Orth et al., 2012).
When tourists have (vs not) enough information about destinations, this helps them to avoid (vs not) any risks during their journey (Aliperti and Cruz, 2019) and able (vs not) to judge and interpret destination events. Sufficient information (vs information asymmetry) about destinations also helps tourists to feel more confident (vs not) about their experiences (Tassiello and Tillotson, 2020;Chi et al., 2020). Then, they feel (vs not) more confident that they have a high probability (vs low) to control their trip itinerary at destinations (García-Milon et al., 2020). When tourists feel that they could control (vs not) their journey, they cognitively believe that they could (vs not) match their expectations at destinations (Narangajavana et al., 2017). Matching the events' expectations (vs not) influences tourists to have positive emotions (vs negative) (Volo, 2021). Positive emotions (vs negative) drive tourists to increase (vs decrease) the probability of internal attribution toward their experiences at destinations (Toti et al., 2021;Jackson, 2019).

Third themes: experience and tourists' characters as locus of control consequences
Two different tourists have reviewed the same destination at the same time; the destination is called, "Grand Canyon South Rim" in the USA. The first review shows that tourists had strong positive reactions because they believed they were in control of the itinerary when making an accurate trip preparation. Hence, they mentioned "We took the Grand Canyon Railway" and "where we could walk across the parking lot to the train." They also had selfconfidence with a high internal LOC when describing their feelings; they cited "We enjoyed" and "an enjoyable experience." They also believed that they were in control of their entire path. This, in turn, increased their locus of positive control (Jackson, 2019). Then, the satisfaction and attachment to the place (Orth et al., 2012); he mentioned that "this is one of the most spectacular views of nature I have ever seen." Thus, attributing trip success to internal causes with an internal LOC influences satisfaction with positive WOM.
On the contrary, the second review "This place is horrible, we can't control anything" shows that the tourists strongly responded negatively because they could not control their actions or the trip itinerary path. This enhanced the external LOC by attributing their failure to external causes (Jackson, 2019) (e.g. prices, restaurant numbers and time for parking) with less satisfaction and negative WOM (Orth et al., 2012). Thus, attributing trip failure to external causes with an external LOC affects dissatisfaction and negative self-esteem.
Here, regarding previous examples, tourists begin to interpret the event they encounter at the destination after deciding to visit a destination. If tourists recognize that they can enjoy and control the trip itinerary, they have a high positive internal LOC; they start to spread positive WOM (Camilleri, 2017). Whereas external causes are attributed with negative external LOC by spreading negative WOM (Jackson, 2019). Tourists' characters are one of the major causes to distinguish the internal versus the external LOC when experiencing an actual journey. So, tourists who have greedy personalities with a low internal LOC will not be satisfied. They tend to acquire a more pleasant experience without satisfaction. In this case, they will have a negative external LOC during the journey by spreading negative WOM (Jiang et al., 2020). In contrast, tourists with a high internal LOC are less likely to be influenced by negative ascription during the journey (Hampson et al., 2021).
In conclusion, tourists' LOC occurs through cognitive processes; these processes start when tourists start with conceptions forming, these concepts are distinct from a person to another, concepts molding from information that person perceives in different life situations. Then consumers frequently form a common knowledge about this information. This knowledge is distinct from person to person depending on residents, perceptions and cultures. In addition to that, this information is used to understand the intentions behind a particular action. Afterwards, the notion of "salience" comes to mind; salience information that directly scratches positively (vs negatively) person emotions that affect forming kind of behavioral response. Thus, primacy notions come to the mindset, every person has his (or her) own behavioral privacies, these privacies scan a sequence of interpretation to experience actual events. Then the person starts to give special comments as interpretation. But before that, beliefs influence these comments by magnitude of the likelihood of causes to motivate the person to explain or act to any event. In the final stage (motivation to act), if the person is internally (vs externally) motivated to act, it will be more positive (vs the negative) to attribute tourism destination.
Thus, tourists always attribute the full period in which they interact directly or indirectly at the destination. From the tourist's perspective, this attribution is a reliable indicator of the degree of satisfaction of the tourist with its effects on (re-)visiting the destination (Mccoll-Kennedy and Sparks, 2003). This, in turn, stimulates a positive internal LOC.

Theoretical contribution
The current study extends the tourism literature in several ways. For instance, Jackson (2019) has studied tourism perception and the link between tourist attribution and positive (vs negative) tourism experiences. Jackson's study found that tourists are more likely to protect themselves from blaming feelings and ascribe negative experiences to external causes. However, Jackson's paper has not investigated the tourist attributions before visiting destinations, mainly at the information-seeking stage. The current study extends Jackson's literature by clarifying tourists' attribution in the information-seeking stage, by explaining the importance of this stage in determining positive or negative attribution toward destination brands. This is important because attribution processes at the information-seeking stage could motivate tourists to visit (vs not) the destinations.
Moreover, Orth et al. (2012) have studied tourists' attribution toward destinations' attachment. They found that when tourists are satisfied with their experiences at destinations, they positively attribute toward the destinations events and attach to them. However, they have not investigated the probability of ascribing these experiences to positive or negative causes by LOC theory. The current study extends Orth et al.'s (2012) literature by providing evidence that when tourists ascribe positive events to internal causes (vs external), they are more likely to have (vs not) high (vs low) attachment to destinations. Therefore, the current study enriches the tourism literature by shedding light on applying LOC theory to help understand tourists' interpretations of different events.

Managerial implications
Managerially, this study's findings propose to assist tourism practitioners in fathoming the essence of what happens inside tourists' intuition to ascribe different events or form different experiences at tourism destinations. Tour operators can audit their marketing plan depending on the tourists' LOC and consequences by determining the prevalence of knowledge and information about the destination on their online platforms. They can assure tourists' attachment to their destination brand and attract more tourists by spreading positive WOM or e-WOM.
For example, the findings show that information, perceptions and destination image play a prominent role in forming tourists' LOC. Thus, starting from the budget setting for tourism service providers, in the case of destinations with multi-attraction (e.g. leisure tourism, culture tourism, dark tourism, etc.), managers have to give large portions of the marketing budget to provide accurate information to the identified audience, not to public audiences. For example, destination managers could set a large budget to provide information about the general attractions at destinations without specifying each type. In this case, tourists who need more information about a specific type of tourist, such as leisure tourism, will find it difficult to find a sufficient amount of information to be familiar with this type of tourism at the destinations. Then according to LOC theory, this demotivates them to strengthen their internal positive ascription without destination brands. Therefore, destination managers should pay more attention to provide sufficient information about each type of tourism when launching their marketing campaigns.
Moreover, tourism service providers have to remain to provide memorable experiences at destinations by studying tourists' perceptions about destinations. This will remain positive LOC when attributing different experiences to different causes. This occurs when tourism managers use "customer centric marketing" strategy to achieve the best method to match tourists' preferences to remain positive LOC.

Future directions
Regarding the previous arguments of LOC theory applications, it is important to fill the literature gap with a holistic contribution in studying tourists' LOC in building destination brand attachment. This requires tourism researchers as well as consumer behavior researchers to answer the following questions in their potential studies: What effect does the internal LOC (compared to external) have on the tourism destination brand's information and knowledge span? What behavioral antecedents in the tourist planning process influence tourists' LOC to (re)visit tourism destination brands? What approaches can retain positive attribution toward tourism destination brand in case of service failure? What are the similarities and differences between tourists' genders and preferences in forming attribution to tourism destination brands?
Besides these questions, future studies could also look at the relationship between attribution dimensions (stability controllability with their relationship with the LOC) and how these interactions between dimensions affect tourists' behavior toward the destination brand. By answering the following questions: What practical techniques can tourism suppliers recognize better unstable tourism destinations causes that can affect tourists' LOC? What are the main factors that influence stable LOC toward long-haul vs short-haul visits to the destination brand? What do tourists perceive as its advantages and disadvantages if they do not have control to make their own decision even they have a high LOC? Does age and education level influence how tourists' LOC takes shape before, during and after the journey? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the host country's customs regarding residents' LOC toward tourists? How well are tourists affected by these customs? How effective or desirable is the LOC to adapt to these customs? What effect does daily use of social media on changing tourists' LOC span toward destinations?
What are the most effective communication strategies to control tourists' LOC in the planning stage to visit destinations? How have financial and political factors affected tourists' LOC when choosing destinations?