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The analysis of consumer behaviour requires the consideration of various processes internal and external to the individual. To understand behaviour, it is necessary to examine the complex interaction of many influencing elements. This study deals with determinants of behaviour, culture and reference group influences, the relationships between individuals and their environments, perceived risks, and family decision processes. It concludes with an illustration of tourist behaviour modelling.

Independent travelers are those vacationers who have booked only a minimum of their transportation and accommodation arrangements prior to departure on the vacation. Independent travel is an important and growing sector of worldwide tourism. Choice of vacation itinerary for the independent vacation represents a complex series of decisions regarding purchase of multiple leisure and tourism services. This chapter builds and tests a model of independent traveler decision-making for choice of vacation itinerary. The research undertaken employs a two-phase, inductive–deductive case study design. In the deductive phase, the researcher interviewed 20 travel parties vacationing in New Zealand for the first time. The researcher interviewed respondents at both the beginning and the end of their New Zealand vacations. The study compares pre-vacation research and plans, and actual vacation behaviors, on a case-by-case basis. The study examines case study narratives and quantitative measures of crucial variables. The study tests two competing models of independent traveler decision-making, using a pattern-matching procedure. This embedded research design results in high multi-source, multi-method validity for the supported model. The model of the Independent Vacation as Evolving Itinerary suggests that much of the vacation itinerary experienced in independent travel is indeed unplanned, and that a desire to experience the unplanned is a key hedonic motive for independent travel. Rather than following a fixed itinerary, the itinerary of an independent vacation evolves as the vacation proceeds. The independent traveler takes advantage of serendipitous opportunities to experience a number of locations, attractions and activities that they had neither actively researched nor planned.

Through application of multi-level structural equation modeling as the data analysis technique, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the group-level impacts on a couple’s food choices during travel at a coastal destination.

Researchers obtained 380 individual questionnaires from 190 mixed gender couples (who eat oysters) in Charleston and Beaufort County, South Carolina, USA. Data were collected from both members of the couple during their vacation. Due to missing data and normality issues 5 couples and 30 individuals were eliminated. The remaining data were analyzed with SPSS 21 and EQS 6.2 with advanced confirmatory factor analysis and multi-level (ML) regression techniques.

The study results indicated that while women have a more negative attitude than men toward oysters, their intention to eat oysters during vacation is not different from their partner. By detecting the interdependency of responses of individuals within a couple, this study revealed that a ML approach is a more powerful way to understand the decision-making process of couples. Additionally the difference in the results of single- and ML models showed that the latter approach lowers the chance of Type 2 error and provides more accurate results.

In tourism decision-making literature, the focus has been mostly on the individual despite the collectivistic nature of tourism activity. The current study is the first to analyze a couple’s decision-making process at the group level. Furthermore by collecting data from both members of the group during their vacation, this study has distinguished itself from previous studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association of gender and travel decision-making style of generation Y (Gen Y) – recreational, price conscious, impulsive, perfectionist, high quality, novelty seeker, habitual, confused by over-choice – to the use of social networking sites (SNS) for travel information share. The study focuses on purchase decision pattern of young travelers by examining the travel decision-making styles.

The author has adopted the quantitative approach for the fulfillment of the objectives of the study. The exploratory method is used to get a better understanding of different concepts used in the study, Social Networking Sites and Decision-Making Style and Gen Y, and the primary information is collected from the structured questionnaire. Using travel decision-making style and gender as grouping variables, different tests were performed to test the hypothesis and to understand the influence of different travel decision-making style and gender on travel information share on SNS.

The present study identifies the existing seven travel decision-making styles of Gen Y, which are Confused by over-choice, Habitual, Novelty seeker, Price conscious, Perfectionist high-quality conscious, Recreational and Impulsive. The results of the study reflect that confused by over-choice, habitual, perfectionist, price conscious travel dimensions have an association with SNS for travel information share. In addition, gender also has an association with usages of SNS for travel information share.

This study has only used consumer typology approach to study decision-making styles, whereas other variables like personality and attitude can be further studied. Second, the study is limited by the spatiotemporal limitation, as the study is just restricted to one geographical area and time, and generalizations can vary with the change in spatiotemporal features in the study.

The findings of the study imply that Gen Y is an important travel market segment, and to cater this segment, SNS can be used as an effective marketing tool. The study of various segments in different groups will help in understanding the market more clearly and using SNS more effectively. In addition, finding association of travel decision-making style with SNS helps in forming effective and innovative marketing strategies.

India is a developing country where many market segments are still unexplored and Gen Y is being one of them. The study was conducted, keeping in mind the need of tourism industry. The study explores the tourism market segment of Gen Y by identifying the decision-making style and also identifies the association of different decision-making style with Gen Y information-sharing behavior on social networking site.

Destination recommender systems need to become truly human‐centric in their design and functionality. This requires a profound understanding of human interactions with technology as well as human behavior related to information search and decision‐making in the context of travel and tourism. This paper seeks to review relevant theories that can support the development and evaluation of destination recommender systems and to discuss how quantitative research can inform such theory building and testing.

Based on a review of information search and decision‐making literatures, a framework for the development of destination recommender systems is proposed and the implications for the design and evaluation of human‐centric recommender systems are discussed.

A variety of factors that influence the information search and processing strategies that influence interactions with a destination recommender system are identified. This reveals a great need for data‐driven models to inform recommender system processes.

The proposed framework provides a basis for future research and development in the area of destination recommender systems. The paper concludes that the success of a specific destination recommender system will depend largely on its ability to anticipate and respond creatively to transformations in the personal and situational needs of its users. Such system intelligence needs to be based on empirical data analyzed with sophisticated quantitative methods. The importance of recommender systems in tourism marketing is also discussed.

During the pandemic, two types of fear were identified that occur significantly in all groups or profiles of people. The aim of this paper is to determine which of the two types of fears exist in certain psychological groups, and which of the fears strongly influence the decision to travel.

The VALS 2 method and standardized questionnaire were used for the segmentation of the tourist market or for the determination of the psychographic profiles of the consumers, and three additional questions were joined to it as they were vital for the research of the type of fear and its impact on the decision for traveling. When the reliability of the questionnaire and the validity of the sample were determined, the data were further processed using a computer program package IMB AMOS SPSS 21.00, and then, based on the theoretical suppositions and hypotheses, the SEM structural model was created.

The paper indicates the existence of established types of fears in humans, when it comes to pandemics and similar crisis situations. People are most afraid of infection during travel, and lack of funds and job loss during the critical period of the pandemic. The research conducted confirms that all groups of people, who are determined by the psychological technique VALS 2, react with a certain dose of fear and make decisions under the pressure of fears.

The research had limitations in terms of contact with people and conducting live surveys. The measures during the pandemic, which were carried out by the state, included social distance and limited movement of people.

The work can contribute to the community, along with similar research. The results of the research will be available, and it will be possible to see the behavior of people during crisis situations, and the impact of fears on making decisions, both travel decisions and decisions related to other areas of life.

The paper provides research results on a large sample of respondents, and can serve as a basis for further research in the field of tourism, psychology and similar fields. It is crucial to consider the type of fears, and the strength of the impact of these fears on the decision to travel, during crisis situations.

Although experiential consumption has received some attention from tourism and hospitality researchers in the past decade, the profile of experiential consumers has not been discussed thus far. The purpose of this paper is thus twofold: to test the sociodemographic antecedents of experiential versus utilitarian consumption for profiling purposes and to examine the potential behavioral consequences of experiential versus utilitarian consumption tendencies.

On an online research platform, 413 respondents answered questions concerning logic-based/emotion-based decision-making traits, as well as sociodemographic characteristics and several travel behavior variables.

Data revealed that emotion-based decision makers are more likely to be females, who are more passionate about their travel needs than are logic-based decision makers. Results also revealed that the importance that emotion-based decision makers place on travel preferences, potential travel risks and travel information sources is higher than that of their logic-based counterparts.

The current study used one personality trait, emotion-based decision-making, as a proxy for experiential consumption. There are other potentially explanatory traits that should be investigated in future studies.

Destination marketing organizations (DMOs) promoting destinations with historical and cultural attractions can capitalize on the finding that these attractions are highly demanded by both types of decision makers, whereas DMOs of man-made attraction destinations may need to find ways to embellish the significance of these attractions for both types of decision makers.

Even though social risk was the lowest-rated item in general, both decision-making traits were highly correlated with social risk. The higher the tendency in the decision-making style, either logic-based or emotion-based, the more important how a trip would make them look within their social circle. Social risk concerns for both types of decision makers should be addressed in marketing messages.

The current study represents one of the earliest attempts to draw a picture of experiential consumers in comparison with utilitarian consumers in sociodemographic and behavioral characteristics.

The present research extends the existing literature of halal tourism and Muslims’ travel decision-making by applying information-seeking models and the planned behavior theory to identify the process of decision-making to travel to non-Islamic destinations. This study aims to identify the views of Muslim travelers who traveled before to non-Islamic destinations to evaluate their information search experience and how their travel decision is formed.

Semi-structured interviews are conducted with a sample of Muslim travelers who visited a non-Islamic destination during the past five years. Data saturation resulted in 17 interviewees from different Islamic destinations, namely, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan and Pakistan.

Muslim interviewees indicate the relative importance of reference groups compared to the government websites as a source of information. This study concludes some remarkable results regarding the importance of some halal marketing strategies such as halal searchability and availability, halal certification and appraisal, halal at airports and halal hotels. It presents an emergent framework that shows the factors affecting visiting a non-Islamic destination regarding halal issues for Muslim travelers.

It provides destinations’ official tourism managers with various strategies to brand their destinations as Muslim-friendly destinations.

Investigating the process of decision-making of traveling to non-Islamic destinations from Muslim travelers’ perspective is limited. Examining the role of information-seeking behavior in Muslim travelers’ decision-making is scarce.

The choice overload (CO) phenomenon, whereby having many options leads to negative consequences, has been studied widely in psychology and marketing. However, empirical evidence of CO in the tourism context is limited, even though people often encounter numerous choices (e.g., vacation destinations, airfares, hotels, tours) at different stages when planning their holidays. Investigating CO in tourism and hospitality is important because (online) travel advisors are providing tourists with numerous choices, yet they do not know whether or not these decision makers are content after choosing from these large choice sets. This chapter proposes to review and apply insights garnered from the CO literature to tourism research. Accordingly, the chapter proposes five groups of solutions for tourists and travel advisors to avoid CO effects: reducing decision task difficulty, reducing choice-set complexity, reducing preference uncertainty, focusing on decision goals rather than the means to achieve those goals, and adopting appropriate decision-making styles.

This chapter explores Prospect Theory — a descriptive model of modelling individual choice making under risk and uncertainty, and its applications to a range of travel behaviour contexts.

The chapter provides background on Prospect Theory, its basic assumptions and formulations, and summarises some of its theoretical developments, applications and evidence in the field of transport research.

A body of empirical evidence has accumulated showing that the principle of maximisation of expected utility provides limited explanation of travel choices under risk and uncertainty. Prospect Theory can be seen as an alternative and promising framework for travel choice modelling (although not without theoretical and practical controversy). These findings are supported by empirical observations reported in the literature reviewed in this chapter.

The chapter provides a detailed account of the design and results of accumulated research in travel behaviour research that is based on Prospect Theory’s observations, insights and formulations. The potential of Prospect Theory for particular decision-making in travel behaviour research is articulated, main findings are presented and discussed, and limitations are identified, leading to further research needs.