Channeling Life Satisfaction to Tourist Satisfaction: New Conceptualization and Evidence

This study developed a model that predicts tourist satisfaction with a destination based on their life satisfaction in their home country. The model was grounded on an assumption that tourist consumption does not necessarily entail consuming commodities, on which the expectancy-disconfirmation framework is built. The model was tested with 1,048 inbound tourists in Switzerland from eight countries. We found that among all the structural relationships, those between life satisfaction, positive affect, destination image, and tourist satisfaction were the most significant and robust across all nine models. This suggests that life satisfaction at home boosts tourist satisfaction at the destination through the mediations of positive affect and destination image. By contrast, all structural relationships related to negative affect were either nonsignificant or extremely weak We conclude that life satisfaction at home can be channeled to the destination through experience-based affect and destination image, which eventually affects tourist satisfaction.