(Correspondent: Li Qiuyun)
Recently, the thesis titled Always best or good enough? The effect of ‘mind-set’ on preference consistency over time in tourist decision making, which was cooperated by Ms. Li Qiuyun (doctoral student), Dr. Li Chunxiao, Prof. Xu Hong and Prof. Scott McCabe from Nottingham University Business School, was adopted and published by Annals of Tourism Research, a top tourism periodical.
Based on the Construal Level Theory and Maximizing and Satisfying Mind-set, the thesis surveyed how time distance influences the choice preference of tourists by virtue of experimentation. The study found that with the approaching of time distance of travel, the preference of tourists will be “compromised” from a more desirable destination to a more feasible one, which is consistent with the Construal Level Theory. The reason why this study is innovative is that it has found the theoretical boundary of the effects above, namely, compared with the tourists who are of satisfying mind-set in decision making, the preference of those who are of maximizing mind-set are less likely to compromise.In other words, regardless of how long the time to travel will be, tourists who are of maximizing mind-set always tend to be more desirable destinations. The study also found that such a different preference model is unrelated to the importance of desire, which, however, is mainly due to the feasibility of the destination that the tourists of maximizing mind-set do not pay much attention to. The desire and feasibility attributes of destinations discussed in the thesis is of significant practical value for the formulation of the target marketing strategy. The destination should adjust the promotion and marketing according to the two attributes in combination with tourism decision-making at different stages. In addition, destinations should adopt a differentiated marketing strategy accordingly, and guide or change the preferences and choices of the tourists through the activation of different mind-sets, which is mainly due to that the preference of tourists of maximizing and satisfying mind-set varies.
As a generally accepted and significant SSCI periodical in the field of tourism management (Impact Factor 5.086), Annals of Tourism Research mainly publishes empirical and theoretical studies of tourism management from the perspective of sociology.
