Sociodemographic, Psychographic, and Behavioral Correlates of Fun in the Destination Context

Abstract

Over the past decade, experiential consumption has received a growing attention from tourism and hospitality scholars. Even though fun is one of the most used concepts in daily rhetoric, it was mostly mentioned as a related concept in studying other variables in tourism, hospitality, and leisure contexts. The current study investigated fun as a construct and its sociodemographic, psychographic, and behavioral correlates. On an online research platform, 412 respondents living in the US answered questions about dimensions of fun related to destinations, sociodemographic, psychographic, and several travel behavior variables. Data revealed that both gender and the emotion/logic-based decision-making trait explain the importance of destination fun dimensions. Expectation of destination fun was further found to be significantly correlated with the preferences for travel types, travel risk concerns, and preferences for travel information sources. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.