The increased interest on psychology of tourism is undeniable, since it is evidenced that psychological aspects are related to the choice of specific destinations (Jafari, 1987; Passafaro et al., 2015; S. C. Plog, 1974). But which ones? Several researchers tried to answer that question, some by proposing tourist typologies or roles based on psychological aspects, others by trying to find relationships between personality and tourist behaviors or preferences.
2.1 Tourist Typologies/Roles
Many tourist typologies/roles can be found in literature and represent the role played by tourists while experiencing a destination (Yiannakis & Gibson, 1992). Cohen (1972) was one of the first researchers to propose a tourist typology, composed of four types: the organized mass tourist (least adventurous, lazy, prefers package-tours, is more organized and prefers familiarity to novelty), the individual mass tourist (similar to organized mass but the tour is not fully preplanned, has a certain control over his time and itinerary and is not bound to a group), the explorer (trip self-arranged, likes to meet locals and speak their language without totally immersing herself), and the drifter (extremely independent, has no time schedules or itinerary, lives with the locals, likes novelty at maximum and familiarization at minimum).
Plog is another renown researcher who studied the psychology of travel in tourism (Stanley Plog, 2001; S. C. Plog, 1974). He proposed two main psychographic dimensions to characterize the tourists’ travel behavior: Allocentrics, who are more nature related, adventuresome, curious, like to explore the world around them, practical, outgoing, self-confident, seek for novelty and new experiences; and Psychocentrics, who are self-inhibited, anxious, non-adventuresome, prefer the familiar in travel destinations, especially if they can drive to them, and places where they can relax. The two dimensions are in the opposite extremes of a normally distributed continuum, being this scale later extended (S. C. Plog, 1991, 1994).
Jackson, White, and White (2001) proposed four types of tourists: the explorer, the adventurer, the guided, and the groupie, combining the orthogonal scales of Allocentrics-Psychocentrics and Introversion-Extraversion.
Due to the ambiguity between the dimensions of both Plog’s and Jackson et al. (2001) models, Eachus (2004) proposed a modification to those typologies so a more objective measure of tourist preferences could be used: Adventurous preference, Beach preference, Cultural preference, and Indulgent preference. To predict their proposed Holiday Preferences Scale, they used the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (BSSS) (Hoyle, Stephenson, Palmgreen, Lorch, & Donohew, 2002), and found that tourists with high scores in sensation seeking tended to prefer Adventurous and Beach holidays but not Indulgent holidays. No significant correlations were found between Sensation Seeking and Cultural holidays, but older tourists were more likely to prefer Cultural holidays than younger.
Based on Cohen’s individual mass tourist type (Cohen, 1972) and after surveying tourists in Chalkidiki (Greece), Wickens (2002) proposed five micro-types of tourists: the Cultural Heritage type, who were more interested in the cultural, natural and historical aspects of the region; the Raver type, who were attracted by sensual and hedonistic pleasures, prefer to spend more time at the beach and its night clubs; the Shirley Valentine type, who were seeking for a romantic experience with a “charming Greek gentleman”; the Heliolatrous type, who just wanted to relax and sunbath; and the Lord Byron type, who had the ritual to return every year to the same destination, because they enjoyed the familiarity, nostalgia and felt like home.
To enhance the relevance of recommendations in RS, Gretzel, Mitsche, Hwang, and Fesenmaier (2004) proposed 12 travel personalities and studied how they related to 17 travel activities according to a set of destinations in Northern Indiana, having found strong correlations between them. The most selected travel personalities were All Arounder, Sight Seeker and Culture Creature. Concerning the relationships found, as also later verified by Delic et al. (2016), most travel personalities were related to multiple activities, for instance, Shopping Sharks type was related to tourists more interested in shopping, nightlife, and dining. Culture Creatures preferred festivals, museums, and historic sites. Family Guy was not related to gambling, biking, or hunting/fishing. Trail Trekkers were less related to City Slicker, Shopping Shark, and Gamer travel types. Boaters did not consider themselves as Sight Seekers, and Beach Bums did not identify with the History Buff category. The other types corresponded to their respective activities. Later, the same authors studied if the proposed travel personalities could predict the activities and/or places to be recommended by a destination RS (Gretzel et al., 2006). They found the proposed travel personality types could be matched with certain activities and those activities to specific destinations in the Northern Indiana, and that travel personalities could be used as a classification strategy replacing psychographic variables, serving as “very good proxies for capturing user personality traits and preferences and can be used to make specific destination recommendations” (Gretzel et al., 2006).
As pointed by Gretzel et al. (2006), “it is not clear how easy it is for individuals to select and identify with an existing” typology or how they can actually predict the tourists’ behavior. Although being a potential way of describing types of tourists and creating marketing segments, typologies do not allow to understand what personality dimensions and/or traits are behind those preferences, and therefore are not easy to implement in a (G)RS without the need of certain initial configurations by the user, problem we propose to solve by automatically predicting the tourists’ preferences for tourist attractions based on their personality.
2.1.1 Personality as Predictor of Preferences for Tourist Attractions/Destinations
As pointed by several authors, the existing research on tourism behavior is mostly descriptive instead of predictive (Jackson et al., 2001; Schneider & Vogt, 2012) which is a limitation that needs to be overcome, i.e., what personality dimensions or traits are predictive of the tourists’ typologies or behaviors/preferences found in literature?
For example, in studies related to their tourist typology, Jackson et al. (2001) found Extraversion and Allocentrism were independent constructs, confirming Nickerson and Ellis (1991) suggestion. The same cannot be said of Openness to Experience and Allocentrism, which showed to be correlated (M. S. Jackson & R. Inbakaran, 2006).
Some researchers focused on adventure tourism (Addison, 1999; Millington, Locke, & Locke, 2001), developing adventure tourism typologies such as “hard adventure” and “soft adventure” typologies (Lipscombe, 1995). Since most studies failed to determine the psychological antecedents of soft (e.g.: hiking, hunting, scuba diving) and hard (e.g.: climbing, cave exploring) adventure travelers (Schneider & Vogt, 2012), Schneider and Vogt (2012) applied Mowen’s 3M Model of Motivation and Personality for consumer behavior (Mowen, 2000), to explain the behavior of soft and hard adventure travelers. They found the interest in cultural experiences, need for arousal (excitement seeking) and need for material resources were predictors of hard adventure travel, and the interest in cultural experiences and competitiveness of soft adventure travel.
Crotts (1990) found the more dogmatic (close-minded) the participants were, the less novelty and more familiarity they wanted in their vacations, and the ones that had a greater need for cognition, and tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking sought more for novelty.
In 2002, Plog (S. C. Plog, 2002) studied if Venturers preferred different types of tourist activities in opposition to Dependables (Plog changed Allocentrics and Psychocentrics dimensions to Venturers and Dependables, respectively (SC Plog, 1995)). Among other studies, he found the more adventurous the tourists, the more they participated in activities, such as: “fine dining, visits to historic churches/sites, visits to art galleries, visits to old homes/mansions, nature travel/ecotouring, hiking/backpacking/camping, attending theatre/drama events, attending musicals, wine tasting/winery tours, attending jazz concerts, bicycle touring, and attending symphony/opera concerts”, as well as using health club/exercise, and scuba diving. All tourist types had similar preferences for shopping. He also confirmed “Venturers travel more than Dependables”.
Li et al. (2015) studied the impact of sensation-seeking and extraversion in the behavior of three types of tourists: familiarized mass tourists, organized mass tourists and independent tourists. They found extraversion did not significantly predict the tourists’ behavior in neither of the three types, but sensation seeking did, being the highest level for independent tourists, followed by organized mass tourists and then familiarized mass tourists. They also concluded extraversion and sensation seeking were measuring different things, which is in line with Jackson et al. (2001) and Nickerson and Ellis (1991) findings.
A study on how Extraversion and Openness to Experience influenced the tourists’ satisfaction with a set of different tourist experiences was performed by Bujisic et al. (2015). Results showed that individuals with higher level of Openness to Experience tended to be more satisfied with aesthetic and escapist experiences than those with lower level. In contrast, individuals with lower Openness to Experience were more satisfied with entertainment and educational experiences compared to the ones with higher level. Extroverts tended to be more satisfied with educational and escapist experiences.
K. Y. Poon and Huang (2017) used Plog’s psychographic model (S. C. Plog, 1994) to study how travel personality affected peer-to-peer accommodation (“couch-surfing”) preferences in the AirBnB platform. They found Allocentrics (adventurous and risk-taking) who travelled alone, with partner, or with friends, were more prone to use AirBnB than Psychocentrics, or Allocentrics when travelling with family.
More recently, Masiero et al. (2019), beside other factors, studied how personality could influence long-haul tourists to visit a stopover destination. For measuring personality, they used the BSSS (Hoyle et al., 2002) and concluded sensation seekers were more inclined to stopover visits. Also, travelers more interested in entertainment (shopping, casinos, cinemas, theme parks, theater, etc.), nature (seascape, coasts, islands, beaches, landscapes, parks, mountains, flora and fauna), and cultural attractions (historical/archaeological sites, museums, architecture and industrial sites, city sightseeing) were more prone to a first-time visit to a stopover destination, contrary to tourists with preference for sport activities who were less likely to visit a stopover destination.
An interesting concept was proposed by Urry (1992), “The Tourist Gaze”, who claims tourists are interested in travelling or doing some holiday activity because of the visual stimulation derived from those attractions, like the attractiveness of the blue waters on a beach, the colors of exotic animals and plants, the aspect of the food in a restaurant, and so on. It is an interesting point of view, but we believe the gaze is not the cause of the preference for a certain attraction, but instead, it is a visual stimulus for a tourist with a certain personality to prefer a certain attraction.
Although many studies on psychology of tourism for different tourism sectors can be found, many are about typologies of tourists, which as mentioned before, are descriptive of the tourists’ behavior and do not predict how that behavior influences the choice of tourist preferences. Others try to predict how psychological aspects influence tourist behavior or preferences, but most of them only rely on Sensation Seeking, Extraversion, and/or Openness to Experience scales, which do not cover all Big Five’s dimensions. Few studies try to correlate all Big Five dimensions with tourist behaviors or preferences.
For example, in order to obtain a better understanding of the users’ touristic personality, and find what tourists might actually like to do on vacations, assigning a more accurate travel behavior profile, Neidhardt, Schuster, Seyfang, and Werthner (2014); Neidhardt et al. (2015) performed a factor analysis on the 17 tourist roles proposed by Gibson and Yiannakis (2002) and the Big Five personality dimensions, obtaining seven factors that captured the tourists behavior, where some of them revealed to be correlated with personality dimensions: (1) Sun loving and connected – highly correlated to the sun lover tourist role and the Neuroticism, Openness and Conscientiousness personality dimensions; (2) Educational – correlates organized mass tourist and educational tourist with Agreeableness; (3) Independent – combines independent mass tourists I and II and seeker; (4) Culture loving – correlates archaeologist and high-class tourist with Extraversion; (5) Open minded and sportive – combines anthropologist and sport tourist with Extraversion; (6) Risk seeking – results from the correlation of action seeker, explorer and jetsetter; (7) Nature and silence loving – correlates escapist I and II. The factors were then associated by experts to more than 100 travel-related pictures and assigned to 10835 Points Of Interest (POI). The final model was then implemented into a web-based recommendation engine (PixMeAway). A user study revealed the Website was exciting, inspiring, interesting, and enjoyable. The authors also showed the tourists’ profile could be represented by a combination of the seven factors.
Hirsh (2010) related personality to the environmental concern in a community of 2690 German adults. They found high levels of Agreeableness (more empathic individuals) and Openness (increased cognitive abilities and flexible thoughts) were related to a greater environmental concern, followed, unexpectedly, by Neuroticism (probably due to anxiety about environment degradation). Conscientiousness had a smaller positive effect on environmental concern, and no significant association of Extraversion was found. Katifori, Vayanou, Antoniou, Ioannidis, and Ioannidis (2019) found personality was related to preferences for cultural storytelling experiences.
Kvasova (2015) studied how personality influenced tourists’ eco-friendly behavior. No association between Extraversion and eco-friendliness was found, but individuals with high Agreeableness were strongly related to eco-friendly behavior, followed by Conscientiousness and Neuroticism, confirming several past studies on the same area of research (Hirsh, 2010; Markowitz, Goldberg, Ashton, & Lee, 2012; Milfont & Sibley, 2012). Regarding Openness to Experience, individuals with high imagination were negatively associated to eco-friendliness but individuals with high intellect were positively associated.
Jani (2014b) and Delic et al. (2016) studied how the Big Five correlated to a variety of tourist roles. Surprised why personality was not being further studied to better understand tourists and predict their travel preferences, Jani (2014b) explored that relationship using the Big Five and the 12 travel personalities (types) proposed by Gretzel et al. (2004). The author found significant personality differences between the travel types. Those who enjoy games of any type (Athlete type), historical sites, shopping, and water activities/attractions (Boater) are high in Openness to experience, and those who like to lay around the beach (Beach bum) and spend time with family are low in that dimension. Shopping and Family travel types have a high conscientiousness, and Athlete and Gamer types are low in that factor. Trekker and All things travel types have higher Extraversion, and Cultural, Beach bum, and Boater types are lower in Extraversion. As for high Agreeableness, it includes Boater and Family travel types, and low Agreeableness the Gamer type. Low Neuroticism was associated with Family and All things travel types.
Delic et al. (2016) analyzed the relationship between the 17 tourist roles defined by Gibson and Yiannakis (2002) and the Big Five. For example, Sun Lover type was related to high neuroticism individuals, Archeologist to extraverts, and Drifter to less conscientious people. No significant correlations were found between the other tourist roles. As expected, they also found tourist roles varied with age, but that the Big Five personality dimensions were stable across ages.
All these studies show that the travel behavior and preferences are related to the tourists’ personality. However, none, to the best of our knowledge, correlates the Big Five personality factors to the choice of raw categories of tourist attractions. With this work, we intend to fill that gap by proposing a model to predict the preference for a wide range of tourist attractions, adapted from the “Thesaurus on Tourism and Leisure Activities” of the World Tourism Organization (Organization, 2001), based on the tourists’ five personality dimensions, aiming to help tourism (G)RS to provide recommendations for visiting attractions/destinations just by knowing the tourist’s personality. This research is motivated by the evidence found in literature, from which it is possible to reason that the tourist typologies do not fully justify the tourists’ preferences for tourist attractions, since many different combinations of intensity for the personality traits exist and therefore a single typology may not be enough for a certain tourist as well as not all the attractions present in a typology may be suitable for that tourist. This claim is supported by the results found by Gretzel et al. (2004) and Neidhardt et al. (2015). Although it is “easy” to recommend attractions based on a single personality dimension, individuals have a combination and different scores on the five personality dimensions. How do we aggregate all that to recommend the right tourist attractions? We cannot recommend an attraction classified for high extraversion and low neuroticism to someone low in both dimensions.
2.2 Tourism Motivation
Many studies on tourism motivation exist, some studying motives for travelling to specific sites (Collins-Kreiner & Kliot, 2000), tourism niches (Hassani & Moghavvemi, 2019; Heung & Leong, 2006; Otoo & Kim, 2020), or in general (Heitmann, 2011), others to propose scales or dimensions of motivations (Crompton, 1979; Pearce & Caltabiano, 1983), among others. These studies are particularly important to tourism marketing, and therefore to tourism Recommender Systems, so better and more tailored services and products can be delivered to tourists.
One of the first researchers to care for the tourists’ motivations was Dann (1977), by trying to answer the question “What makes tourists travel?”. Although some viewpoints could be found at the time, claiming the major reason for travelling was to escape from the daily routine, the ordinary, etc., there was no empirical evidence to demonstrate it (Dann, 1977; Lundberg, 1971). However, a general classification to explain tourist motivation with “push” and “pull” factors was widely accepted (Dann, 1977; Heitmann, 2011). “Push” factors refer to the tourist’s physiological and psychological aspects (e.g., escape, relax, etc.) influencing his decision to travel, like needs and preferences. “Pull” factors pertain to the characteristics of the travel destination or external motivations that attract (pull) the tourist to visit it. As noted by Dann (1977), there was a preference towards “pull” factors, instead of “push” factors, to explain the tourists’ travelling behavior, which didn’t make much of a sense, since tourists decide to visit a destination due to a prior need. Therefore, the author proposed the concepts of “anomie” and “ego-enhancement” as motives for travelling. By interviewing 422 winter tourists in Barbados, he found evidence of those motives, and that they were independent. Anomic tourists “wish to get away from it all”, that is, due to the exhaustion of the daily routines and work, lack of privacy, and/or the need for communication, love and affection, they need to escape from the home environment to relax, and interact more with others (family, or even locals or other tourists), which can be accomplished by travelling away on holiday and perform activities different from the quotidian. Others, want to travel due to the need of feeling superior and self-recognition, “ego-enhancement”, to show the prestige associated to their holiday and/or create envy in their community.
Later, Iso-Ahola (1982), suggested tourism motivation was mainly driven by escape and seeking, both having personal (psychological) and interpersonal (social) factors, and therefore he distinguished four dimensions: personal seeking, personal escape, interpersonal seeking, and interpersonal escape.
McIntosh and Goeldner (1985) proposed five types of motivations, reflecting the ideas of the Maslow’s pyramid: Physical (the need for relaxation or other activities to reduce stress or refresh the body and mind), Emotional (to seek romance, adventure, spirituality, escapism or nostalgia), Cultural (to learn about the destination’s culture and heritage), Interpersonal (the need to maintain or develop new relationships, by visiting relatives or friends, or meet new people), and Status and prestige (the need to enhance self-status and receive attention/valorization from others).
A very interesting travel motivation theory was developed by Pearce (1993), Pearce and Caltabiano (1983), and Moscardo and Pearce (1986): the Travel Career Ladder (TCL), latter modified to Travel Career Pattern (TCP) since tourists could be at more than one level at a time (Pearce & Lee, 2005). Also based on the Maslow’s needs hierarchy (Maslow, 1970), the theory describes five different levels of tourist needs, from bottom to top: relaxation needs, safety/security needs, relationship needs, self-esteem and development needs, and finally, self-actualization/fulfillment needs. The theory argues that tourists’ motivation changes according to their age and/or travel experience, resulting in a travel career. To understand pleasure travel motivation more broadly, Pearce and Lee (2005) identified a wide range of travel motive items and determined 14 underlying motivation factors: Novelty, Escape/relax, Relationship (strengthen), Autonomy, Nature seeking, Self-development (host-site involvement), Stimulation, Self-development (personal development), Relationship (security), Self-actualize, Isolation, Nostalgia, Romance, and Recognition. They found escape/relax, novelty, relationship, and self-development were the most important motives for travelling. The more experienced travelers were more motivated by self-development through host-site involvement and nature seeking. The low experienced were more driven by stimulation, personal development, self-actualization, security, nostalgia, romance, and recognition.
Being evidenced that the majority of travelers are or will be senior tourists (55+) (Otoo & Kim, 2020), there are many studies on older tourists’ travelling motivations (Vigolo, 2017). For instance, Boksberger and Laesser (2008) showed that Exploration and Relaxation were the core motives for older tourists, confirming Iso-Ahola (1982) theory. In a review of travel motivations of senior tourists, Patuelli and Nijkamp (2016) identified three main dimensions: culture/nature, experience/adventure, and relax/well-being/escape. Vigolo (2017) found seven main types of travel motivations of older tourists in literature: Escapism/relaxation, Seeking/exploration, Social interaction, Health/wellbeing, Learning/education, Self-esteem, and Nostalgia. Otoo, Kim, and Park (2020) investigated the overseas travel motivations of Mainland Chinese seniors and found eight domains: Achieving a sense of socialization, Seeking time with family, Seeking self-esteem, Escaping, Experiencing culture/nature, Seeking knowledge/learning, Seeking once-in-a-lifetime experience, Seeking nostalgia.
Literature on travel motivation is very extensive and therefore only some works were presented, but one thing is clear, the main reasons for travelling have been very similar in the last decades and among different age echelons, being Exploration, to have Cultural/Nature experiences, and Relaxation/Escapism the most common motives.
2.2.1 Personality as Predictor of Tourism Motivation
By analyzing why someone chooses to travel to a specific site or tourist attraction can help find their travelling and behavioral patterns, which can greatly help improve the tourist’s profile in a (G)RS and thus provide better recommendations. And, if, for instance, personality could be related to the motives behind travelling, it would be easier to propose certain attractions or destinations by just knowing the tourist’s personality. As Heitmann (2011) points out, many factors can influence the tourists’ behavior and choices, such as cultural and religious factors, demographics, and personal factors, such as personality, lifestyle, occupation, income, among others. So, how does personality relate to the most common tourists’ motivations?
As mentioned in Section 2.1, several tourist roles and typologies have been proposed to describe tourist behaviors (Cohen, 1972; Gray, 1970; S. C. Plog, 1974; V. L. Smith, 2012) but they do not explain the reasons behind those behaviors (Heitmann, 2011).
Not many works that study the relationship between (Big Five) personality and travelling motivations were found, and the ones existing, to the best of our knowledge, aim to relate personality and the motivations for specific tourism niches or destinations, such as religious tourism and cruise ship tourists (Abbate & Di Nuovo, 2013; Scaffidi Abbate, Di Nuovo, & Garro, 2017), travel curiosity (Jani, 2014a), volunteer tourism (Suhud, 2015), or just for the travel desire (Labbe, 2016), or relate other personality types to the travel intention (Kaewumpai, 2017; H. Kim, Yilmaz, & Choe, 2019; Kwon & Park, 2015; Otoo, Kim, Agrusa, & Lema, 2021), or only to one motive. Others use different scales of personality (not the Big Five).
An example is the work of Abbate and Di Nuovo (2013), which aimed to find the relationship between the Big Five personality dimensions and the motivations for choosing religious tourism, since as pointed by MacCannell (2013), religious tourists choose to travel to sacred sites for motives other than of religious nature. The sample were 679 Italian tourists visiting the Marian Sanctuary of Medjugorje (Bosnia-Herzegovina), with a medium age of 36.9 years old. They found an unbalanced gender distribution with almost the double of females, reflecting the composition of the type of groups travelling to sacred sites (Jansen, 2012). The authors proposed three motivational categories: Curiosity and discovery (the will to discover new sites and curiosity for different cultural experiences), Out-of-routine (escape daily routines and have unusual experiences), and Self and sociality (to rediscover one’s self through socialization). The authors concluded that the more extraverted tourists are motivated by curiosity and the need for discovery, and the more agreeable are linked to the need for socialization. A higher Conscientiousness predicted the need to escape daily routines and have unusual experiences, and to self-discovery through socialization in males, and the will to discover new sites and curiosity for different cultural experiences in females. The more open to experience male tourists are motivated by rediscovering one’s self through socialization, and females by Curiosity and discovery and Out-of-routine motives. They didn’t find a significant relationship between Neuroticism and any of the travel motivations.
Other studies tried to find the relationship between the Big Five and travel curiosity/search for tourist information. Curiosity is a human-behavior characteristic, characterizes a trait of Openness to Experience, and as defined in the Cambridge Dictionary, is “an eager wish to know or learn about something”. In their studies to improve the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory scale, Kashdan et al. (2009) compared the Big Five to the curiosity measurement, and found Openness to Experience to have the strongest positive correlation with curiosity, followed by Extraversion and Consciousness. Neuroticism was negatively correlated, and no significant correlation was found with Agreeableness.
Jani (2014a) also studied how the Big Five dimensions of personality related to the curiosity to seek travel information. The study sample was comprised of 360 Korean travelers visiting South Korea. The authors used the Big Five Inventory (BFI) to measure the tourists’ personality, and six travel curiosity items, which were represented by two factors: Interest-travel curiosity (I-travel curiosity) and Deprivation-travel curiosity (D-travel curiosity). The former refers to the pleasure of discovering new things/information and the latter to the need to seek information to reduce insecurity and/or unwanted states of ignorance (Litman, 2008). The study results showed that Openness to experience positively influenced the I-travel curiosity (as already observed by Heinstrom (2010)), and that Conscientiousness had no statistically significant influence on the D-travel curiosity. Extraversion was found to positively influence I-travel curiosity but with no statistical significance. As also observed by (Litman & Jimerson, 2004), Neuroticism positively predicted the D-travel curiosity type, and finally, Agreeableness positively influenced D-travel curiosity.
A more recent study of Scaffidi Abbate et al. (2017) compared the motivations (Curiosity and discovery, Out-of-routine and Self and sociality) and personality of religious travelers versus cruise ship tourists. The sample was composed of 683 Italian tourists, equally distributed in gender. They applied the Travel Motivation Survey (Figler, Weinstein, Sollers, & Devan, 1992) and the BFI. The authors found cruisers had stronger motivations than religious tourists, showing higher scores in all three motivations. Religious tourists were less open to experience, but more cooperative, friendlier, and empathic (agreeable). Cruisers had higher scores in Extraversion than religious tourists, but religious tourists scored higher in Agreeableness than cruisers. With regards to personality vs. the proposed motivations, in religious travelers Openness to experience positively predicted Curiosity and discovery motivation and Agreeableness negatively. Agreeableness and Consciousness negatively predicted Out-of-routine motivation. Self and sociality was predicted by negative scores in Openness to experience. Most of this results did not support the results found in their previous study (Abbate & Di Nuovo, 2013), maybe because the previous sample was separated and analyzed by gender. A different pattern was found in cruise tourists, where Openness to experience and Agreeableness both positively influenced the curiosity motivation, and Consciousness negatively. Out-of-routine motivation was negatively predicted by Consciousness and Neuroticism. Finally, Openness to experience, Extraversion (energy) and Consciousness positively predicted Self and sociality motivation.
Otoo et al. (2021) focused their research on senior tourists (55 years or older) from two different cultures: United States (U.S.) and Mainland China, since they represent the most elderly populations and have a great demand for travel (Otoo & Kim, 2020). Using Plog’s allocentric-psychocentric typology (S. C. Plog, 1974), they studied how the seniors’ tourist types affected their overseas travel motivations, preferences, sociodemographic and travel-related preferences. In both cultures, psychocentrics had the highest scores in motivations. They determined U.S. seniors were described by three tourist types (psychocentric, mid-centric and allocentric), and Mainland Chinese seniors by two (psychocentric and allocentric). Eco-tourism was more prominent in psychocentrics and mid-centrics, and overseas travel was mostly preferred by females, with married females displaying less adventurous behaviors. Regarding U.S. allocentric seniors, the majority were unmarried, preferred long duration overseas travels and to travel alone, to arrange their own travels and had high incomes. U.S. psychocentrics had lower incomes, preferred short stays, to travel with family and to have a predefined package tour. U.S. mid-centrics were mostly married, with an average income and preferred to travel with their partner. Mainland Chinese were less inclined to long and remote destinations overseas travel, adventure activities, and unfamiliarity, although demonstrating a higher interest for overseas travel than U.S. seniors. Mainland Chinese preferred familiarity in contrast to novelty and had a special interest for health-related tourism.
The findings in literature show that certain motivations for travelling in specific contexts can be predicted by personality dimensions. With this work, we intend to verify if that applies to a greater range of travel motivations, including the most common ones, abstracted from specific niches or destinations, and to propose a model to predict tourism motivations based on the tourists’ Big Five personality dimensions.
2.3 Travel-Related Preferences and Concerns
To choose a travel destination is part of a process that starts with the need/desire for travelling (Mathieson & Wall, 1982), and the information that is collected is evaluated according to the traveler’s needs and preferences as well as possible constraints. According to Hung et al. (2016), there are three types of travel constraints: intrapersonal (e.g., to feel guilty for travelling, to be afraid of travelling to a specific destination, limited knowledge of tourism), interpersonal (e.g., lack of travel partners), and structural (e.g., lack of time or money). For instance, many people would like to visit Ukraine, but due to the actual war it is not a choice. Also, someone might prefer to visit a country on summer instead of another season. Or, someone may not be able to travel due to money or time constraints.
In their literature review, Hung et al. (2016) stated some travel constraints were different between cultures. For instance, Asian tourists had more intrapersonal or interpersonal constraints, while tourists from Western countries were more limited by structural constraints. Nyaupane, McCabe, and Andereck (2008) found younger tourists (< 60 years old) had more travel constraints due to available time and money, and older tourists (> 74 years old) due to health problems. According to Vigolo (2017), the main travel constraints found in literature are: Time, Money, Health, and Lack of travel companion. In this study, we focused in the intrapersonal and interpersonal constraints and will consider them as concerns from now on.
Some concerns have shown to intensify with age (Fleischer & Pizam, 2002; Lindqvist & Björk, 2000; Vigolo, 2017; You & O'Leary, 1999), like the fear of becoming ill, lack of doctor availability, concerns for safety and personal security, sanitation, service and food quality (J. Kim, Wei, & Ruys, 2003; Lindqvist & Björk, 2000; Torres & Skillicorn, 2004). Health problems are more noticeable in older tourists (> 64 years old), reducing the length of vacations (Fleischer & Pizam, 2002), and increasing the concerns about travelling to long-haul or less developed destinations, flight durations, health insurance, or even humidity (Hunter-Jones & Blackburn, 2007). As pointed by Vigolo (2017), Huang and Tsai (2003) found senior Taiwanese travelers revealed preoccupation for leaving their house unattended, not having travel companions, dietary restrictions, or not having an enjoyable time and waste money. Chinese women were more concerned about “limited knowledge of tourism, health and safety, culture shock, lack of travel partners, low quality service facilities, limited availability of information, and negative reputation of tour guide” (Gao & Kerstetter, 2016; Vigolo, 2017). Emotional barriers like fear of the unknown, loss of freedom and loss of spontaneity were pointed as the highest barriers for family caregivers and their care-recipients by Gladwell and Bedini (2004).
Although safety and security have long been key concerns for many tourists (Larsen, Brun, & Øgaard, 2009; A. Poon & Adams, 2000), tourism in general is not seen as risky, as observed by Sönmez and Graefe (1998a, 1998b). However, certain unexpected and tragical events can decrease the tourists’ confidence and reduce the desire to travel. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, on September 11, 2001, were a sad example, which led to the mass cancelation of inbound and outbound flights (Floyd, Gibson, Pennington-Gray, & Thapa, 2004). The actual COVID-19 pandemic is another case, where to travel, either overseas or within the same country, is considered risky, and even forbidden to many countries (Borkowski, Jażdżewska-Gutta, & Szmelter-Jarosz, 2021; Godovykh, Pizam, & Bahja, 2021; Morar et al., 2021; Neuburger & Egger, 2021; Tabak, Canik, & Guneren, 2021; Zenker, Braun, & Gyimóthy, 2021).
The study of the perceived risks in tourism has long been investigated (Dolnicar, 2005), being the concept first introduced by Bauer (1960). According to Dolnicar (2005), the study of perceived risks can be classified into two dimensions: negative perceived risks, which are not sought by the tourist, and positive perceived risks, which are actively sought by the tourist, such as sensation seeking activities. In their investigation of the fears Australian tourists associate to leisure travel, in the context of domestic and overseas travel, Dolnicar (2005) found five categories of risk factors: (1) political risk, such as “terrorism, political instability, war/military conflict”; (2) environmental risk, like “natural disasters, landslides”; (3) health risk, like “lack of access to health care, life threatening diseases, lack of access to clean food and water”; (4) planning risk, such as “unreliable airline, inexperienced operator, not assured flight home”; and (5) property risk, such as “theft, loss of luggage”. All the referred risks were more frequently associated to overseas travel. As for domestic travel, wildlife and the road’s condition were the greatest concerns. These findings are in line with the literature review made by Floyd et al. (2004), where they identified four main negative risk types: (1) “war and political instability”, (2) “health concerns”, (3) “crime”, and (4) “terrorism” (Çakar, 2020; Fennell, 2017; Mawby, Tecău, Constantin, Chițu, & Tescașiu, 2016; Medeiros et al., 2020; Rittichainuwat & Chakraborty, 2009; Simpson & Siguaw, 2008; Torres & Skillicorn, 2004). The context may change everything. Negative events in association to fears and concerns can prevent the tourist from visiting certain places/attractions, from being involved in particular activities, or even from travelling.
As for travel-related preferences, someone might prefer to travel accompanied or alone, to a cold or hot weather destination, or to take a flight or travel by car, and so on. Travel preferences can also influence which destination to visit or even the decision to travel at all. For instance, Otoo et al. (2020) studied eight travel-related features/preferences: travel duration (by flight), travel partners, accommodation type, travel arrangement type (own or package tour), information technology acceptance, tourism type (e.g., urban, eco, health), attractions type (e.g., historical, natural scenery), and activities type (outdoor, shopping, dining), and related them to the travel motivations they found. Ramires, Brandao, and Sousa (2018) studied what travel preferences and destination attributes tourists visiting Porto in Portugal preferred, namely: travel organizer, travel partners, transport to destination, type of accommodation, type of activities in the destination, transport in the destination, and how they were related to their travel motivations. Another example is the work of Øgaard, Doran, Larsen, and Wolff (2019), who explored the relationship between travel preferences, destination valuations and perceptions, and revisit intentions of tourists visiting Western Norway during summer showing all Cohen’s type of tourists visited the destination.
Many travel preferences and concerns can influence the travel plans, bringing limitations or even prevent tourists from travelling. To know them is of major importance for a (G)RS to provide suitable recommendations. But how does personality fits in these all? Is it an influencing factor for those preferences and/or concerns?
2.3.1 Personality as Predictor of Travel-Related Preferences and Concerns
Several studies that relate tourist typologies or personality to travel-related preferences and/or concerns, especially concerns, could be found.
Sandra Lee Basala (1997); Sandra L Basala and Klenosky (2001) investigated if individuals with different travel styles had different travel-related preferences, namely regarding the type of accommodations, type of travel companions, and language of the host destination. Using the International Tourism Role Scale (ITR) (Mo, Howard, & Havitz, 1993), they identified three types of travel styles in the sample, ranging from tourists seeking for a high level of familiarity to tourists seeking for a high level of novelty: Novelty Seekers (NS), Average Travelers (AT), and Familiarity Seekers (FS). As expected, they found FS had a lower intention to visit an imaginary novel destination than NS. Regarding accommodations, FS preferred “international chain hotels, followed by resort complexes, and locally owned facilities with many amenities”; the same was stated for the AT. NS preferred locally owned facilities with many amenities in contrast to a low preference for “chain hotels, all-inclusive resort complexes, and locally owned facilities with few amenities”. As for travel companions, FS and AT preferred to travel with family, friends or in an arranged tour group, and did not like to travel alone. Contrary to the expected, Novelty Seekers had higher scores for travelling with friends or family, followed by travelling in a tour group, and low scores for travelling alone, but when comparing the three travel styles, NS were more prone to travel alone than the other two styles. This discrepancy may have been caused by the scenario that described the imaginary country (“government instability and past terrorist activity”), creating the sense of unsafety and lack of security, or simply because of the sample, which had limited age groups, were from the same midwestern state in USA and was mainly composed of female respondents. As for the language preference, all three travel styles preferred to have their native language in the destination, but comparing the three travel styles, NS had a higher mean for the different-language condition, followed by NS and then FS.
Sakakida, Cole, and Card (2004) studied Japanese and American college students travel preferences, confirming Plog’s Psychocentric-Allocentric theory. Allocentric students preferred to travel with a small number of companions, to adventurous destinations, different destinations on each trip, and to individually arrange their travels, with American students being more Allocentric than Japanese, except for the individual arrangement of travels which was more preferred by Japanese. Psychocentric students preferred to travel to popular destinations (with a greater preference by the American), with many people, to have a preplanned package tour before travelling, and visit the same destinations.
Beside relating demographics, M. Jackson and R. Inbakaran (2006) studied tourists visiting Australia and how their proposed personality types (Explorer: introvert + allocentric, Adventurer: extravert + allocentric, Guided: psychocentric + introvert, and Groupie: psychocentric + extravert) related to the preference for pre-planning a vacation, using internet to book travels, travelling alone, travel companions, intention to revisit a destination, length of stay, and destination’s cultural similarity. They concluded Guided tourists were more inclined to plan and pre-book accommodations than Adventurers. Adventurers were the greatest users of tourist industry websites to book tourist products as opposed to Groupies. Explorers and Adventurers were more susceptible to travel alone, and Groupies the least likely. Groupies preferred to travel in groups, and the Guided and Explorers were also very inclined to travel with others. The Guided type was most likely to travel for visiting friends and relatives, but Groupies less likely. No significant correlations were found between the travel types and first visit/revisit. Groupies were confirmed to stay the shortest time at a destination, but no significant correlations were found for the longest time. The authors claim the findings related to the length of stay may be more affected by structural constraints (cost, time, availability) than by the tourist’s personality, which makes sense. Regarding the cultural similarity, the authors claim it would be predicted by a “negative correlation between cultural similarity and allocentrism”, i.e., the Guided type would represent tourists from cultures similar to Australia, and the Adventurer type tourists from distinct cultures.
Considering three personality dimensions (Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Emotional sensitivity (Neuroticism)), Maritz, Yeh, and Shieh (2013) studied how tourists’ personality influenced the perceived travel risks (divided into three categories: personal risk, property risk and liability risk), the travelling intention, and the perceived risk on travel intention. The respondents were 274 employees and tourists in Taiwan’s national parks. As for perceived travel risk, Conscientiousness and Emotional sensitivity positively influenced personal risk, Emotional sensitivity positively predicted property risk, and finally, all three personality dimensions showed positive effects on liability risk. Extraversion did not appear to be affected by travel risks. Regarding travel intentions, all three personality dimensions positively influenced the travel intention. Perceived risk significantly affected travel intention in terms of personal and liability risks. Evidence suggested the perceived risk would reduce the influence of extraversion, conscientiousness, and emotional sensitivity on travel intention.
According to Morakabati and Kapuściński (2016), several studies consider personality traits are of special relevance to differentiate the tourists’ different levels of sensibility to risk. Using Plog’s psychographic model (S. C. Plog, 2002), they tried to support those studies, as well as to find the relationship between risk perception and the destinations’ benefits, and if terrorism affected the willingness to travel according to the tourists’ personality. They found the more allocentric the tourists were (more confident about the travel), the less risk perception they had, and vice versa. Also, they found the more the tourists valued the culture/heritage and nature/adventure benefits of the destinations, the less risk averse they were, meaning, if the benefits outweigh the risks, the tourists might ignore the risks, supporting the results found by Maritz et al. (2013). Tourists more interested on seaside benefits were more risk averse, confirming Plog’s definition of psychocentrics and allocentrics. They also noticed that terrorism negatively influenced the desire to travel in all three Plog’s psychographic types and all types of benefits pursued.
In their study on the influence of the Big Five personality dimensions on the transportation mode to the IKIA airport, in Iran, Yazdanpanah and Hosseinlou (2016), among other findings, verified bad weather conditions (rainy and snowy weather) had a more negative impact on higher neuroticism individuals, having the lowest preference for snowy weather. High agreeableness individuals were more negatively affected by rainy weather, showing less willingness to use public transportations. Individuals with higher extraversion scores were less prone to be influenced by weather conditions, which goes in line with the Maritz et al. (2013) findings that extraverts are less affected by travel risks.
Carvalho, Pianowski, and Gonçalves (2020) studied if Extraversion and Conscientiousness were related to social distancing and handwashing COVID-19 containment measures in Brazil. They verified the less extraverted the more concerned with social distancing the participants were. Participants who considered neither of the two containment measures had lower conscientiousness scores. Participants that adhered to both or one of the containment measures had higher conscientiousness.
Another study on COVID-19 pandemic (Aschwanden et al., 2021), focused on concerns related to the pandemic (e.g., become sick with coronavirus), precautions to avoid catching the disease (e.g., wear face mask), preparatory behaviors (e.g., stockpiling food), and duration estimates concerning the disease (e.g., time to return to normality), showed high neuroticism was related to more concerns but to fewer precautions, and unrelated to preparatory behaviors; high conscientiousness to more precautions; higher scores on extraversion were predictors of more optimistic duration estimates; and higher neuroticism of more pessimistic ones. Age showed to moderate the personality effect, revealing to be a great predictor of psychological and behavioral responses to the disease, especially in older adults (aged 65+): greater concerns were a result of higher openness scores, high openness and agreeableness values were predictors of more preparations and higher duration estimates, higher conscientiousness was positively associated with more preparatory behaviors, but had non-significance for middle-aged (40–64 years) and younger adults (18–39 years old), but was related to shorter duration estimates in middle-aged and younger adults and higher duration estimates on older adults.
Al-Omiri et al. (2021) studied the relationship between personality and COVID-19-related impacts on concerns, fears, and behaviors of participants from Jordan, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and United Kingdom. They reported different correlations between the personality dimensions and certain COVID-19 impacts for the various countries, and that Conscientiousness and Extraversion were the major influencers in the precautions to avoid infection. Higher scores on Extraversion (contrary to the study of Carvalho et al. (2020)) and Conscientiousness were associated to a higher acceptance of the COVID-19 control measures. Neuroticism and Agreeableness were the greatest predictors of the COVID-19 impacts on the participants’ stress and behaviors, where higher scores on Neuroticism and lower on Agreeableness were related to more distress and negative behaviors. High Neuroticism, low Extraversion, and low Agreeableness were predictors of more concerns and fears related to COVID-19. A greater impact of COVID-19 on opinions and beliefs was associated with higher Neuroticism and lower Agreeableness scores. Openness to experience was only related to social distancing, and some specific impacts on participants of certain countries.
Pan and Zuo (2021) tried to find the relationship between personality and the Urumqi Chinese travelers’ preferences toward air itineraries. They stated higher conscientiousness travelers were more susceptible to the tickets fare, and high neuroticism scorers were less sensitive and preferred to choose air itineraries departing at night or with connection.
Faullant, Matzler, and Mooradian (2011) studied how Extraversion and Neuroticism influenced the joy and fear basic emotions in a mountaineering experience and in the satisfaction formation. They confirmed their proposed hypothesis that Extraversion positively predicted joy, and Neuroticism positively predicted fear, i.e., the more extraverted mountaineers experienced higher levels of joy while the more neurotic ones were more susceptible to experience fear.
To plan a trip requires time, being a process that involves an uncertain temporal distance. Tan (2020) used that temporal distance to moderate and study the relationship between the tourists’ personality, perceived leisure travel constraints (safety concerns, lack of money/time, and no-interest) and information sources. The author found distant-future scenarios were affected by personality: Conscientious individuals were more preoccupied with safety concerns and no-interest constraints, Agreeable ones only with safety-concerns, and Neurotic with all the constraints. Individuals with high Openness were less influenced by the lack of interest, money, and time. No influence was found for Extraversion.
It is undeniable that some leisure activities are more pleasant, or only possible, under certain weather conditions. For instance, to relax on the beach is more enjoyable in a sunny and warm weather than on cold or rainy conditions (Sabir, 2011; Shi, 2012), skiing is only possible on snowy conditions (not considering artificial snow). Liu, Yu, and Hsieh (2021) verified both tourists with low and high-place attachment greatly diminished their intentions to visit a National Forest in Taiwan when negative climate changes occurred. These is in line with the observation made by Shi (2012), that many tourists are motivated for travelling on particular weather conditions, selecting times of the year where the climate conditions are more favorable to them. The thermal comfort “has a decisive influence on national and international tourist flows, and largely controls the duration of the tourist season, especially in mid- and high-latitude regions” (Mieczkowski, 1985). It is evident that the seasons and/or climatic conditions have a psychological effect on the tourists’ motivation to travel (see Fig. 1), but is personality an influencing factor?
Besides the ones presented, many other variables can influence travel preferences and concerns, like the cases of certain phobias such as the fear of heights, dark, confined spaces, snakes or reptiles, among others. It would be very bad if a (G)RS recommended a tourist to visit the Eiffel Tower if she was afraid of heights, or to play an escape game with a dark and confined spaces theme. And where is personality in the middle of all those phobias? Mellstrom, Cicala, and Zuckerman (1976) argued individuals scoring high on thrill and adventure seeking were less prone to feel fear in anxiety-inducing situations, in fact, they might feel attracted to those situations. In their study, female students who were more anxious and neurotic revealed more fear of snakes, heights, and darkness.
As pointed by Morar et al. (2021),“It is well recognized that personality plays a special role in both perceptions of risks and preferences related to travel”. However, most of the studies found were related to travel risks and perceptions of risk, and travel-related preferences. Studies correlating personality to other types of concerns, such as phobias, or climate preferences, were very hard to find. With this study, we hope to fill that gap and provide a more thorough and complete study on how the Big Five personality dimensions impact travel-related preferences and concerns.