Tourism and Travel Commons^™

Do Satisfied Tourists Really Intend To Come Back? Three Concerns With Empirical Studies Linking Satisfaction To Behavioral Intentions, Sara Dolnicar, Tim Coltman, Rajeev Sharma

Tim Coltman

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 …