Do Satisfied Tourists Really Intend to Come Back? Three Concerns with Empirical Studies of the Link between Satisfaction and Behavioral Intention

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Abstract

Explaining human behavior is a primary concern for tourism research and a substantial body of research concludes that highly satisfied tourists are more likely to return to a particular destination. In this article, we provide an analysis of this body of work, arriving at three concerns relating to the strength of association between satisfaction and behavioral intention: (1) the link between constructs is complex, resulting in the frequent omission of causal factors; (2) inconsistency with construct operationalization impedes cumulative knowledge development; and (3) explainable variance is impeded by between-study heterogeneity. We illustrate these problems by analyzing empirical guest survey data and conducting a meta-analysis of published papers in the three top tourism journals between 2002 and 2011. We offer four recommendations for future research investigating the link between satisfaction and behavioral intention.

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Common method biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies.

Philip M Podsakoff, Scott MacKenzie, Jeong-Yeon Lee … (2003)

Interest in the problem of method biases has a long history in the behavioral sciences. Despite this, a comprehensive summary of the potential sources of method biases and how to control for them does not exist. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which method biases influence behavioral research results, identify potential sources of method biases, discuss the cognitive processes through which method biases influence responses to measures, evaluate the many different procedural and statistical techniques that can be used to control method biases, and provide recommendations for how to select appropriate procedural and statistical remedies for different types of research settings.