When the Future is Now: An Experimental Study on the Role of Future Thinking and Affective Forecasting in Accommodation Decision-Making

When people make travel decisions, they consult their imagination, considering how they would feel in the respective travel situation. Both, researchers who examine this phenomenon and practitioners executing it, commonly hold the vague assumption of an evaluative cognitive process that enables tourists to factor such information into their decision-making process. The nature and functioning of such a process is largely unknown. The authors suggest that travelers, often subconsciously, mentally simulate future hotel stays and predict future feelings to inform their decision-making, a process referred to as affective forecasting. Executing an experimental design, the authors show that actively engaging in episodic future thinking to trigger affective forecasting increases travelers' intentions toward holiday accommodations. This effect is mediated by hotel trust and risk perception, demonstrating that affective forecasting is an effective way for regaining tourists' trust and reducing their perceived risk during a pandemic. Contributions to theory and practical implications are discussed.

Tourism during and after COVID-19: An Expert-Informed Agenda for Future Research

With the COVID-19 pandemic reaching a more mature, yet still threatening, stage, the time is ripe to look forward in order to identify the topics and trends that will shape future tourism research and practice. This note sets out to develop an agenda for tourism research post COVID-19. We surveyed several industry and academic experts seeking their opinion on three important questions: What potential future topics are needed to address the impact of COVID-19? What existing research areas/topics will become more relevant? What changes are recommended for data collection? Interpreting and synthesizing the answers yields six focal research avenues that researchers should devote more attention and effort to. For each topic, we present various important research questions. By doing so, this note paves the way and serves as a signpost for countless intriguing future research endeavors that are of high relevance and demanded by the industry.

Affective forecasting and travel decision-making: An investigation in times of a pandemic

People mentally simulate future events, visualise themselves in these events, and then make predictions about how they would feel. This process is referred to as affective forecasting. Tourism lends itself toward affective forecasting because holiday experiences are not tangible and difficult to judge upfront. The authors conceptualise and empirically examine the mental simulation and affective forecasting in tourist decision-making. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a proof of concept, they employ an experimental research design to demonstrate that affective forecasting can mitigate risk perceptions and travel decision-making in times of a pandemic. The findings highlight how affective forecasting can be leveraged to predict and change travel behaviour in the aftermath of pandemics, though implications reach beyond this context.

Understanding the COVID-19 tourist psyche: The Evolutionary Tourism Paradigm.

Studies across the social sciences are making increasing use of an evolutionary perspective. Yet, despite its potential, the application of evolutionary psychology in tourism research is scant. Evolutionary psychology is arguably one of the most useful approaches to understanding the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic on the tourist's psyche. This research highlights, explains, and empirically demonstrates the vast untapped potential of this perspective for post-COVID-19 tourism research. The authors develop an Evolutionary Tourism Paradigm, which is based on biological epistemology and theory to address questions in post-COVID-19 tourism research. This paradigm is brought to life through a developed ocean and islands model, and its utility for future research endeavors on the Coronavirus pandemic is empirically demonstrated in two studies.

The coronavirus pandemic - A critical discussion of a tourism research agenda.

Unquestionable, the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is one of the most impactful events of the 21st century and has tremendous effects on tourism. While many tourism researchers worldwide are currently 'Covid-19 research gap spotting', we call for more deliberateness and rigor. While we agree that the coronavirus pandemic is unique and relevant to research, we argue that not all effects are worth researching or novel to us. Previous research on crises and disasters do show similar patterns and existing theories can often very well explain the current phenomena. Thus, six illustrative examples are shown how a research agenda could look like. This includes parts where theoretical explanations from tourism are missing, as well as where we think existing knowledge might be subject to a tourism paradigm-shift due to the coronavirus pandemic.