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Plog (1994) suggests that two fundamental personality dimensions are of importance within
the context of tourism: allocentricism and psychocentricism. Allocentric travellers, who exhibit
a self-assured and venturesome personality, are more likely to choose exotic destinations
while psychocentric travellers, whose centre of attention is focused on self-doubts
and anxieties, are thought to prefer familiar destinations (Plog 1994; Ross 1994). Griffi th and
Albanese (1996) have shown that Plog's model can be used to characterize travellers in terms
of their psychographics and suggested practical use of these traits to make destination
recommendations. Further, personality traits related to locus of control and risk avoidance,
which infl uence an individual's decision-making style, play an important role in any decision-
making process but are of particular importance for destination choice processes because of
the high levels of uncertainty involved (Roehl and Fesenmaier 1992). Personality has also been
identifi ed as a factor with considerable infl uence on information search and processing strategies.
For example, individuals' differences in the complexity of the causal explanations they reach to
make sense of their environments suggest that personality infl uences the extent and nature of
information search and integration patterns (Murphy 1994). Also, individuals with a tendency to
postpone decisions when faced with diffi cult choices or confl icts have been found to engage in
search patterns that are different from those used by individuals who are not indecisive (Ferrari
and Dovidio 2001).
Finally, Woodside and Lysonski (1989) argue that personal value systems infl uence travellers'
destination awareness. Um and Crompton (1991) describe personal values as an internal input
that initiates the formation of an evoked set from an awareness set. Studies by Madrigal (1995)
indicate that personal values are a better predictor of choice between group tours and individual
tours than personality, and Zins (1998) suggests that personal values are an important antecedent
variable for hotels. Attitudes are signifi cant determinants of whether or not a destination is
considered as an alternative and how the destination is evaluated in later stages of the destination
choice process. The attitude-behaviour model provides explanations for human behaviour based
on individual attitudes and the behavioural intentions that can be derived from them (Ajzen and
Fishbein 1980). Um and Crompton (1990) argue that destinations with higher attitude scores are
more likely to be included in the evoked set and, ultimately, are more likely to be selected as the
fi nal destination.
The preferred strategies in which individuals process information are referred to as cognitive
style. Cognitive styles affect information gathering, evaluation and selection processes in the
context of vacation trip planning (Grabler and Zins 2002). Rumetshofer, Pühretmair and Wöß
(2003), and Rosen and Purinton (2004), demonstrate that information presentation needs to
match the cognitive style of the traveller in order to be processed effectively. Decision-making
styles are mainly viewed as a mental, cognitive orientation towards shopping and purchasing
(Sproles and Kendall 1986) or a learned habitual pattern (Scott and Bruce 1995), which
dominates the consumer's choice and constitutes a relatively enduring consumer personality.
Vacation styles combine psychographic characteristics such as travel motives with behavioural
patterns (Zins 1999). They have emerged from earlier tourist type research seeking to identify
traveller segments that fundamentally differ in terms of the benefi ts sought from vacations
(Dolnicar and Mazanec 2000).Vacation styles have been found to provide a rather stable criterion
for marketing segmentation and can be seen as strong determinants of trip preferences.
Situational needs
Destination-related decisions are highly sensitive to the situation in which they occur. The
literature indicates that trip characteristics are the most important determinants and include
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