This document proposes a conceptual model to examine tourists' psychological reactions to negative experiences. It draws from attribution theory and other related theories to identify key concepts like causal attribution, satisfaction, and loyalty. The model suggests that a tourist's level of loyalty to a destination will influence how they attribute the cause of a negative experience (internal vs. external, stable vs. unstable, specific vs. global). It then hypothesizes that attributions linked to internal, unstable, or specific factors will lead to higher satisfaction levels. The goal is to understand the moderating role of loyalty in how tourists cognitively process negative events.

1. Purdue Tourism & Hospitality
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ACCOUNTING FOR
TOURIST NEGATIVE
EXPERIENCE
– A CONCEPTUAL MODEL
Suh-hee Choi and Liping A. Cai
Purdue Tourism and Hospitality Research Center
http://www.purdue.edu/tourism/

2. Purdue Tourism & Hospitality
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Background
Complex nature of tourism experience
Service failure always happens
Tourists’ efforts to mitigating negative experience

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Purpose and Objectives
Conceptualizing tourists’ psychological reactions to a
negative experience
Examining key
concepts
Identifying the
relationships among the
concepts

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Related Theories
Self-enhancement theory and self-serving bias
Justice theory

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Attribution Theory in Tourism
Attribution theory
Adopted to understand consumer behavior
Partly used in tourism research

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Proposed Model
Causal
Attribution
Satisfaction
Loyalty
Negative
experience
Locus
Stability
Globality

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Satisfaction
Negative
experience
(-)

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Satisfaction
Negative
experience

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Satisfaction
Loyalty
Negative
experience

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Satisfaction
Loyalty
Negative
experience

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Loyalty as a Moderator
Satisfaction
Loyalty
Negative
experience

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Causal
Attribution
Satisfaction
Loyalty
Negative
experience
Locus
Stability
Globality
P1a : Higher level of destination loyalty leads tourists to attribute more
to internal factors after a negative experience.
P1a

13. Purdue Tourism & Hospitality
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Causal
Attribution
Satisfaction
Loyalty
Negative
experience
Locus
Stability
Globality
P2a
P 2a : Tourists are more satisfied with overall destination experiences if
they attribute the negative experience more to internal factors.

14. Purdue Tourism & Hospitality
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Causal
Attribution
Satisfaction
Loyalty
Negative
experience
Locus
Stability
Globality
P1b
P1b : Higher level of destination loyalty leads tourists to attribute more
to unstable factors after a negative experience.

15. Purdue Tourism & Hospitality
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Causal
Attribution
Satisfaction
Loyalty
Negative
experience
Locus
Stability
Globality
P2b : Tourists are more satisfied with overall destination experiences if
they attribute the negative experience more to unstable factors.
P2b

16. Purdue Tourism & Hospitality
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Causal
Attribution
Satisfaction
Loyalty
Negative
experience
Locus
Stability
GlobalityP1c
P 1c Higher level of destination loyalty leads tourists to attribute more
to specific factors after a negative experience.

17. Purdue Tourism & Hospitality
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Causal
Attribution
Satisfaction
Loyalty
Negative
experience
Locus
Stability
Globality
P2c : Tourists are more satisfied with overall destination experiences if
they attribute the negative experience more to specific factors.
P2c

18. Purdue Tourism & Hospitality
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Causal
Attribution
Satisfaction
Loyalty
Negative
experience
Locus
Stability
Globality
Conclusion

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Negative experience-based scrutiny
The moderating effect of loyalty
Attribution theory as a foundation to understand
how tourists deal with negative experiences
Conclusion

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Thank you.