Shaping destination marketing with norms and personality

This research applies a multiple perspective approach to examine how norms, personal characteristics, and destination preference affect a tourist’ place attachment to a chosen tourism destination. This paper also investigates the level of attachment based on the characteristics of a destination. Two studies involving experimental and survey-based methods were undertaken to examine these relationships. Study 1 was conducted with tourists in Australia. The results show that subjective and descriptive norms have significant direct and indirect effects on place attachment. In contrast to previous research, cultural norms were insignificant in predicting place attachment. Destination preference and tourist personality played significant mediation and moderation roles respectively in the relationship between the proposed antecedents and place attachment. An eye-tracking experiment in Study 2 was conducted to understand what type of destinations were more appealing to tourists. Results of Study 2 reveal that tourists are more interested in, and attached to, destinations with heritage attributes. The findings from the two studies have implications for destination marketing and the management literature and has relevance for tourism practitioners.