Citation

Kiatkawsin K, Bui NA, Hrankai R, Jeong K. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021; 18(4): e2021.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph18042021

PMID

33669683

Abstract

The adventure tourism subsector continues to be popular today. Both industry and academia define adventure tourism's scope from either the physical (e.g., outdoor activity and physical activity) or psychological aspects (e.g., thrill seeking and challenges). Recent studies have pointed out that adventure tourism can be interpreted differently across cultures and markets. Still, risk has always been universally accepted as an essential characteristic of adventure tourism. Thus, most empirical research has studied the role of risk as one of the motivations. However, attempts to investigate related elements that are either a response to or a coping mechanism for the presence of risk are scarce. This present study adopted one of the most prominent frameworks in explaining behavioral intentions, the theory of planned behavior, and included involvement and knowledge variables to extend it. Furthermore, the sensation-seeking and worry constructs were tested for their moderating impact on intentions to participate in adventure tours. The results of structural equation modeling and multigroup invariance tests revealed that subjective norms were not a significant predictor of intentions, while both sensation seeking and worry significantly moderated the relationships between the study variables.

Language: en

Keywords

sensation seeking; involvement; theory of planned behavior; adventure tourism; Vietnam tourism; worry