How Mortality Salience Affects Tourists’ Choice of Restaurants?From the Perspective of Terror Management Theory

Fan ZhangFollow
Chenguang WuFollow

Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Chenguang Wu is an associate professor in Sun Yat-sen Business School, Sun Yat-sen University, whose research interests are focused on tourism demand forecasting and tourist behavior.

Fan Zhang, a postgraduate student in Sun Yat-sen Business School, Sun Yat-sen University.

Abstract (150 Words)

It has been widely discussed that death-related events such as terrorist attack or earthquake may affect tourist behavior. However so far there is no study examining how these events affects tourist behavior from psychological perspective. According to terror management theory, this kind of events may influence human-being behavior by mortality salience effect when people subconsciously buffer their death anxiety. This study is the first to shed light on the effect of mortality salience on tourist behavior by adopting terror management theory. Using experiment methods, the empirical results demonstrate that mortality salience has a positive effect on tourist familiarity-seeking behavior. It is further identified that desire for close relationship plays a mediating role between mortality salience and tourist familiarity-seeking behavior. This study provides new perspective for the relationship examination between mortality salience, close relationship and tourist familiarity-seeking behavior. The important implications for tourism practitioners on product design and marketing strategies are further discussed.

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How Mortality Salience Affects Tourists’ Choice of Restaurants?From the Perspective of Terror Management Theory

It has been widely discussed that death-related events such as terrorist attack or earthquake may affect tourist behavior. However so far there is no study examining how these events affects tourist behavior from psychological perspective. According to terror management theory, this kind of events may influence human-being behavior by mortality salience effect when people subconsciously buffer their death anxiety. This study is the first to shed light on the effect of mortality salience on tourist behavior by adopting terror management theory. Using experiment methods, the empirical results demonstrate that mortality salience has a positive effect on tourist familiarity-seeking behavior. It is further identified that desire for close relationship plays a mediating role between mortality salience and tourist familiarity-seeking behavior. This study provides new perspective for the relationship examination between mortality salience, close relationship and tourist familiarity-seeking behavior. The important implications for tourism practitioners on product design and marketing strategies are further discussed.