How Waterpark Image, Price Fairness, and Satisfaction Create Behavioral Intentions: Moderating Effects of Novelty- Seeking

Despite of a fast-growing number of waterpark development in Thailand, this high capital-intensive business has a very few matured precedent cases in the country. Understanding patron’s behavioral intentions is a very important determinant of long term competitiveness and sustainability in the industry. Thus, this study aims to explore the relationships among the antecedents which are waterpark image, price fairness, and patron’s satisfaction together with their effects on behavioral intentions. The mediating roles of price fairness and satisfaction as well as the moderating role of novelty-seeking are also examined. Regardless of the scant in waterpark literatures, a proposed conceptual framework, applied from literatures in related fields, was empirically tested using a structured questionnaire. All valid respondents rated their opinions on scaled items with five-point Likert scale. A structural equation modeling using SmartPLS3 was performed to verify the proposed hypothetical paths. The analytical results confirm the important of waterpark image and price fairness in predicting satisfaction. While price fairness partially mediates water park image to satisfaction, satisfaction acts as a full mediator for waterpark image and price fairness to behavioral intentions. As anticipated, satisfaction is a strong predictor of behavioral intentions, novelty-seeking on the other hand was not found to have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between satisfaction and behavioral intentions. These findings are beneficial to both existing and future waterpark developers for planning limited resources on most influential factors in proper priority that lead to desired behavioral intentions. This empirical study suggests that water park image, through its direct and indirect effects via satisfaction, is a strongest contributor to behavioral intentions further confirming the necessity for managers to perform a correct combination of marketing mixes that would strengthen the perception of image. In addition, the effect of novelty-seeking on behavioral intentions can be theoretically extended and is recommended for further study to explore in different dimensions other than the moderating role. Further managerial and theoretical implications are discussed in the paper.