Toward an integrated model of tourist expectation formation and gender difference

This study aims to build and test a theoretical model of tourist expectation formation and seeks to explore the gender differences regarding how tourists form their expectations toward a travel destination. Survey data were obtained from 774 outbound Chinese tourists to Macao, and structural equation modelling was used to test the model and proposed hypotheses. The results reveal that travel motivation, advertising, and word-of-mouth (WOM) recommendations influence travelers' cognitive image and cognitive image interacts with affective image to form individuals' expectations toward travel destinations. Notably, the impacts of travel motivation and advertising on cognitive image, and of cognitive image on tourist expectations were significantly stronger for males than females, while the effects of WOM on cognitive image and of affective image on tourist expectations were stronger for females than males. Both theoretical and practical implications of these important findings are discussed. •An integrated model of tourist expectation formation was proposed, tested, and established.•Travel motivation, advertising, and word-of-mouth (WOM) had a positive effect on cognitive image.•Both cognitive image and affective image had a positive impact on tourist expectations.•Gender was found to be a significant moderating variable in the integrated tourist expectation formation model.