Remembered experiences and revisit intentions: A longitudinal study of safari park visitors

Published Date
December 2016, Vol.57:286–294, doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2016.06.014

Author 

Stuart J. Barnes ^a,,

Jan Mattsson ^b,

Flemming Sørensen ^b,

aSchool of Management and Business, King's College London, Franklin-Wilkins Building, 150 Stamford Street, London SE1 9NH, United Kingdom

bDepartment of Communication, Business and Information Technology, Roskilde University, PO Box 260, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark

Received 15 June 2015. Revised 3 December 2015. Accepted 17 June 2016. Available online 1 July 2016.

Highlights

• We test a model of remembered positive affect and tourist revisit intentions.
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  The research uses longitudinal data collection and PLS path modelling.
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  Longer-term remembered experiences have the strongest impact on revisit intentions.
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  Remembered positive affect is temporally unstable and declines over time.
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  Contribution: a theory of serial remembered positive affect and revisit intentions.

Abstract 

Tourism is an experience-intensive sector in which customers seek and pay for experiences above everything else. Remembering past tourism experiences is also crucial for an understanding of the present, including the predicted behaviours of visitors to tourist destinations. We adopt a longitudinal approach to memory data collection from psychological science, which has the potential to contribute to our understanding of tourist behaviour. In this study, we examine the impact of remembered tourist experiences in a safari park. In particular, using matched survey data collected longitudinally and PLS path modelling, we examine the impact of positive affect tourist experiences on the development of revisit intentions. We find that longer-term remembered experiences have the strongest impact on revisit intentions, more so than predicted or immediate memory after an event. We also find that remembered positive affect is temporally unstable and declines over time.

Keywords

Remembered experiences

Attractions

Revisit intentions

Positive affect

PLSPM

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Vitae

Stuart J. Barnes is Professor of Marketing at King's College London. He holds a first class honours degree in Economics and Geography from University College London and a PhD from Manchester Business School. His primary research interests centre on understanding consumer psychology, both online and offline, in different industry sectors. He has published five books (one a bestseller for Butterworth-Heinemann) and more than a hundred and fifty articles, including those in tourism research, marketing and other areas of management.

Professor Jan Mattsson has the chair in business administration at Roskilde university since May 1996. He has held several professorships and visiting professorships in New Zealand, Australia and Scandinavia. He received a Doctorate (Dr. Econ.) in Business Administration at Gothenburg University, Sweden, in 1982 and was promoted there to Associate Professor in 1985. Professor Mattsson is currently active in services marketing, service innovation and international marketing research. He has authored more than a hundred scholarly publications and serves on many editorial boards of international journals in marketing and services. He carries out international research funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Flemming Sørensen is an associate professor at the Department of Communication, Business and Information Technologies, Roskilde University, Denmark. He is a member of the university's research group on Service and Experience Innovation. His main research interests include issues relating to innovation management, innovation networks, user and employee driven innovation, innovation geography, innovation experiments and local economic development based on tourism and related sectors. He has published peer reviewed articles and book chapters about innovation in services, tourism and the experience economy.

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  Corresponding author.
  
  

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