Exploring Travel Constraints, Travel Desire, and Virtual Reality Tourism as a Negotiation Strategy

Abstract

This dissertation offers a comprehensive exploration of travel constraints and the potential role of Virtual Reality (VR) tourism as a negotiation strategy to cope with travel constraints. Comprising three independent articles, this study addresses ten research objectives through three distinct methodologies: meta-analysis, structural equation modeling, and multivariate analysis of variance. The first article synthesizes 45 previous studies spanning the last two decades using meta-analysis, offering a comprehensive understanding of the existing literature, identifying potential gaps, and highlighting the critical role of aging in understanding negotiation and participation intentions related to travel constraints. The study also emphasizes the importance of understanding each travel constraint dimensions independently and examines their potential correlation with travel motivations. The second article focuses on using VR tourism as a negotiation strategy for travel constraints, and explores the interplay among travel constraints, travel motivation, desire to visit the destination, perceived effectiveness, and intention to participate in VR tourism. A novel framework is proposed, grounded in Self-Determination Theory and the CEM model. Specifically, this study examines the mediating roles of the desire to visit the destination and perceived effectiveness of VR tourism as a negotiation strategy on the relationships between travel constraints and intention to participate in VR tourism. The results enrich the understanding of the relationships between travel constraints and negotiation strategies adoption, providing critical insights for practitioners in the development of VR tourism experiences. The third study extends previous findings by exploring how different travel constraints impact individual desire to visit the destination and perceived effectiveness of using VR tourism as a negotiation strategy. The study finds that today’s public perceives VR tourism as a more effective negotiation strategy for intrapersonal constraints compared to other types of travel constraints. However, the results also suggested that intrapersonal and time constraints significantly reduce individuals desire to visit the destination. This disparity in findings raises a critical question for practitioners in VR tourism development. The article also compares nature-based destinations and non-nature-based destinations, examining their interaction with travel constraints. The results suggest that compared to nature-based destinations, individuals are more eager to visit non-nature-based destinations that lead them to perceive time and financial constraints. These findings supplement the existing literature on VR tourism promotion and provide insightful implications for stakeholders in marketing through VR. In conclusion, this dissertation bridges the gap in the literature regarding travel constraints and using VR tourism as a negotiation strategy. Limitations, implications, and future research directions are discussed for each individual study. The overall conclusion reinforces the contribution of this dissertation to extending existing literature and proposes overarching limitations that could be addressed in future research.