Tourists’ perceived travel risk, desire to travel, travel engagement, and subjective wellbeing: the moderating role of emotion regulation

Drawing on the extended model of goal-directed behaviour, we test a framework that examines the impact of tourists’ perceived travel-related risk and their desire to travel on their travel engagement post-the pandemic, which is in turn predicted to impact their subjective wellbeing and site revisit intent (i.e. exposing travel engagement’s mediating role in these associations). Moreover, we suggest that tourists’ emotion regulation (i.e. emotion reappraisal/suppression) moderates the association of their perceived risk and their desire to travel, and of their perceived risk and travel engagement, respectively. To explore these issues, we adopt a mixed-method approach comprising symmetric partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and asymmetric fuzzy-set-qualitative-comparative-analysis (fsQCA). The PLS-SEM results indicate that tourists’ (i) perceived travel risk negatively affects their travel engagement, (ii) desire to travel positively affects their travel engagement, (iii) travel engagement raises their subjective wellbeing and site revisit intent, and (iv) travel engagement mediates, while emotion regulation moderates, the proposed associations. Finally, the fsQCA findings suggest that while tourists’ desire to travel acts as a core condition for their subjective wellbeing, their travel engagement represents a core condition for their site revisit intent.