Temporal distance in hotel evaluation and its effects on satisfaction and word-of-mouth

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7784/rbtur.v19.3057

Keywords:

Temporal distance, Travel motives (business/leisure), Satisfaction, Word-of-mouth (WOM), Tangible and intangible attributes

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the influence of temporal distance on the evaluation of tangible and intangible attributes in lodging experiences, and its effects on satisfaction and word-of-mouth (WOM) intention. Based on the Theory of Psychological Distance and Construal Level Theory (CLT), the theoretical model was initially validated by 17 experts, including academic professionals and hotel managers. Subsequently, a survey was conducted with 482 Brazilian guests whose last stay had occurred between less than 1 month and up to 24 months before data collection. The analysis was carried out using structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis (MGA). The results indicate that satisfaction did not show significant statistical variation between tangible and intangible attributes over time. On the other hand, word-of-mouth was more influenced by tangible attributes in evaluations closer to the consumption moment and by intangible attributes in more distant evaluations, especially when moderated by travel purpose (business or leisure). The study contributes by integrating psychological constructs into the consumer behavior literature in tourism, offering practical implications for marketing strategies and hotel management.

 

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Thais Rodrigues Monteiro de Moraes, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Doutoranda em Administração pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Mestre em Turismo pela Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Pós-graduada em Gestão de Meios de Hospedagem pelo Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Comercial (SENAC). Graduada em Turismo pela Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) e em Administração pela (PUC). Professora do Senac São Paulo nas áreas de turismo, hotelaria e eventos. Seus interesses de pesquisa incluem: comportamento do consumidor, hotelaria, falhas em serviço, satisfação e WOM. Contribuições: concepção da pesquisa, revisão da literatura, coleta de dados, análise de dados, discussão.

Otávio Bandeira De Lamonica Freire, Universidade de São Paulo

Doutor em Comunicação pela USP (2009), Mestre em Comunicação pela UNIP (2007), MBA em Marketing pela ESPM (1998). Atualmente, é Professor dos Programas de PósGraduação em Administração (PPGA-FEA/USP) e em Turismo (PPGTUREACH/USP), na Universidade de São Paulo. É coordenador do B.R.A.N.D.S Research Center (USP) e vice coordenador do Núcleo de Pesquisa em Economia e Administração do Turismo (NEAT/USP). É também Chief Science Officer da ILUMEO Data Science Company, empresa que entregou mais de 800 projetos em Marketing Effectiveness desde a sua fundação em 2011. Contribuições: concepção da pesquisa, revisão da literatura, análise de dados, discussão.

Filipe Quevedo Pires de Oliveira e Silva , Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul

Doutor em Administração pela Universidade Nove de Julho (2014) e Mestre em Administração pela Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), com parte dos estudos realizados na Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Atualmente, é Diretor de Extensão da UFMS, Coordenador do Curso de Especialização em Gestão e Governança Pública, e Professor do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Administração (PPGADUFMS). Possui sólida experiência em comportamento do consumidor, métodos quantitativos e análise multivariada, com contribuições acadêmicas e práticas nessas áreas. Contribuições: revisão da literatura, análise de dados, discussão.

References

Almeida, G. S., & Pelissari, A. S. (2019). Satisfação do Consumidor com Base nos Atributos do Serviço de Hos-pedagem. Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Turismo (RBTUR), 13(2). https://doi.org/10.7784/rbtur.v13i2.1516.

Aquino, J. T., de Barros Jerônimo, T., & Melo, F. J. C. (2015). Avaliação da qualidade em serviço de um hotel pelo método SERVPERF. Revista Pensamento Contemporâneo em Administração, 9(1), 124-141. http://dx.doi.org/10.12712/rpca.v9i1.577.

Arora, S. D., & Chakraborty, A. (2021). Intellectual structure of consumer complaining behavior (CCB) research: A bibliometric analysis. Journal of Business Research, 122, 60–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.08.043.

Barboza, M. M., Defante, L. R., de Oliveira Lima Filho, D., & Mantovani, D. (2013). Satisfacción del consumidor de servicios hoteleros: Implicaciones estratégicas. Estudios y perspectivas en turismo, 22(2), 276-293. https://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1851-17322013000200006&lng=es&tlng=es.

Branco, G. M., Ribeiro, J. L. D., & Tinoco, M. A. C. (2010). Determinantes da satisfação e atributos da qualidade em serviços de hotelaria. Production, 20, 576-588. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0103-65132010005000057.

Cantallops, A. S., & Salvi, F. (2014). New consumer behavior: A review of research on eWOM and hotels. Interna-tional Journal of Hospitality Management, 36, 41–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2013.08.007.

Chon, K., & Raymond, T. S. (2014). Hospitalidade: conceitos e aplicações. Cengage Learning.

Ding, Y., & Keh, H. T. (2017). Consumer reliance on intangible versus tangible attributes in service evaluation: the role of construal level. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(6), 848–865. https://doi.org.10.1007/s11747-017-0527-8.

Dolnicar, S. (2002). A review of data-driven market segmentation in tourism. Journal of travel & tourism market-ing, 12(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1300/J073v12n01_01.

Field, A. (2009). Descobrindo a estatística usando o SPSS. 2 ed. Artmed.

Filieri, R., Galati, F., & Raguseo, E. (2021). The impact of service attributes and category on eWOM helpfulness: An investigation of extremely negative and positive ratings using latent semantic analytics and regres-sion analysis. Computers in Human Behavior, 114, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106527.

Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39-50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104.

Freire, O. B. D. L., Senise, D. D. S. V., Reis, W. B., & Ono, H. S. (2017). #Step @by #Step: recommendations for the development of high quality online research. Revista Gestão & Tecnologia, 17(3), 10-35. https://doi.org/10.20397/2177-6652/2017.v17i3.1206.

Frochot, I., & Morrison, A. M. (2001). Benefit segmentation: A review of its applications to travel and tourism research. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 9(4), 21-45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J073v09n04_02.

Hair Jr., J. F., Black., W. C., Babin, B. J., & Anderson, R. (2014). Multivariate Data Analysis. 7 ed. Pearson New International Edition.

Jang, S., Bai, B., Hu, C., & Wu, C. M. E. (2009). Affect, travel motivation, and travel intention: A senior market. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 33(1), 51-73. https://doi.org/10.1177/1096348008329666.

Jiang, S., Scott, N., & Ding, P. (2019). Motivations of experienced leisure travellers: A means-end chain study on the Chinese outbound market. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 25(2), 225-238. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1356766718763694.

Jung, H. S., & Yoon, H. H. (2012). Why do satisfied customers switch? Focus on the restaurant patron variety-seeking orientation and purchase decision involvement. International Journal of Hospitality Manage-ment, 31(3), 875-884. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2011.10.006.

Kim, B., Kim, S., & Heo, C. (2016). Analysis of satisfiers and dissatisfiers in online hotel reviews on social media. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 28(9), 1915–1936. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108%2FIJCHM-04-2015-0177.

Kim, D., & Park, B. (Robert). (2017). The moderating role of context in the effects of choice attributes on hotel choice: A discrete choice experiment. Tourism Management, 63, 439–451. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2017.07.014

Kim, K., Zhang, M., & Li, X. (2008). Effects of Temporal and Social Distance on Consumer Evaluations. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(4), 706–713. https://doi.org/10.1086/592131.

Kocabulut, Ö., & Albayrak, T. (2019). The effects of mood and personality type on service quality perception and customer satisfaction. International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 13(1), 98–112. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCTHR-08-2018-0102.

Kyung, E. J., Menon, G., & Trope, Y. (2014). Construal level and temporal judgments of the past: the moderating role of knowledge. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21, 734-739. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-013-0534-9.

Li, F., & Du, T. C. (2017). The effectiveness of word of mouth in offline and online social networks. Expert Sys-tems With Applications, 88(1), 338–351. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2017.07.004.

Liberman, N., & Trope, Y. (2014). Traversing psychological distance. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(7), 364-369. https://doi.org.10.1016/j.tics.2014.03.001.

Limberger, P. F., Boaria, F., & Anjos, S. J. G. (2014). A relação entre a satisfação geral e as variáveis da satisfa-ção na hotelaria em hotéis de excelência. Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Turismo (RBTUR), 8(3), 435-455. http://dx.doi.org/10.7784/rbtur.v8i3.803.

Lopes, E. L., Herrero, E., Pinochet, L. H. C., & Freire, O. B. L. (2019). Test and validation of data collection strate-gies used in applied social sciences: a marketing study. BASE - Revista de Administração e Contabilida-de da Unisinos, 16(3), 432-463. http://dx.doi.org/10.4013/base.2019.163.04.

Malhotra, N. K., Lopes, E. L., & Veiga, R. T. (2014). Structural Equation Modeling with LISREL: An initial vision. Brazilian Journal of Marketing, 13(2), p. 28-43. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2678786.

Maric, D., Marinkovic, V., Maric, R., & Dimitrovski, D. (2016). Analysis of Tangible and Intangible Hotel Service Quality Components. Industrija, 44(1), 7–25. https://doi.org/10.5937/industrija1-8437.

Nebreda, L. P., Martín, F. D., & González, A. B. (2021). Changes and evolution in the intellectual structure of con-sumer dissatisfaction. Journal Consumer Behavior, 20, 160–172. https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.1864.

Pesonen, A. J. (2013). Information and communications technology and market segmentation in tourism: a re-view. Tourism Review, 68(2), 14-30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/TR-02-2013-0006.

Pizzi, G., Marzocchi, G. L., Orsingher, C., & Zammit, A. (2015). The Temporal Construal of Customer Satisfaction. Journal of Service Research, 18(4), 484–497. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670515584752.

Podsakoff, P.M., Mackenzie, S. B., Lee, J.-Y. Y., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2003). Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(5), 879-903. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.5.879.

Ren, L., Qiu, H., Wang, P., & Lin, P. M. (2016). Exploring customer experience with budget hotels: Dimensionality and satisfaction. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 52, 13-23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2015.09.009.

Rhee, H. T., & Yang, S-B. (2015). How does hotel attribute importance vary among different travelers? An explor-atory case study based on a conjoint analysis. Electron Markets, 25, 211–226. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-014-0161-y.

Ringle, C. M., Silva, D., & Bido, D. (2014). Structural Equation Modeling with the SmartPLS. Brazilian Journal of Marketing, 13(2). https://doi.org/10.5585/remark.v13i2.2717.

Schreurs, B., & Hamstra, M. R. W. (2020). Effectively apologizing to consumers after a crisis: psychological dis-tance and abstractiness/ concreteness of and organization’s apology. Social Cognition, 38(4), 367–378. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2020.38.4.367.

Stamolampros, P., & Korfiatis, N. (2018). Exploring the behavioral drivers of review valence. International Jour-nal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 30(10), 3083–3099. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-04-2017-0239.

Stanujkic, D., Karabasevic, D., Zavadskas, E. K., Smarandache, F., & Cavallaro, F. (2019). An approach to de-termining customer satisfaction in traditional Serbian restaurants. Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, 6(3). http://doi.org/10.9770/jesi.2019.

Tan, W. K. (2018). From fantasy to reality: a study of pre-trip planning from the perspective of destination image attributes and temporal psychological distance. Service Business, 12(1), 65-84. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11628-017-0337-6.

Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2003). Temporal construal. Psychological Review, 110(3), 403-421. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0033-295X.110.3.403.

Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2010). Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance. Psychological review, 117(2), 440–463. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018963.

Trope, Y., Liberman, N., & Wakslak, C. (2007). Construal Levels and Psychological Distance: Effects on Repre-sentation, Prediction, Evaluation, and Behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 17(2), 83–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1057-7408(07)70013-X.

Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2004). The four service marketing myths: remnants of a goods-based, manufacturing model. Journal of service research, 6(4), 324-335. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670503262946.

Varkaris, E., & Neuhofer, B. (2017). The influence of social media on the consumers' hotel decision journey. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, 8(1), 101–118. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTT-09-2016-0058.

Wen, J., Hu, Y., & Kim, H. J. (2018). Impact of individual cultural values on hotel guests’ positive emotions and positive eWOM intention: Extending the cognitive appraisal framework. International Journal of Contem-porary Hospitality Management, 30(3), 1769-1787. https://doi.org.10.1108/IJCHM-07-2017-0409.

Westman, M., Chen, S., & Eden, D. (2023). EXPERT REVIEW SERIES International business travel: a review of theory and research. Journal of Global Mobility: The Home of Expatriate Management Research, 11(4), 461-512. https://doi.org/10.1108/JGM-12-2022-0067.

Wong, I. A., Law, R., & Zhao, X. (2018). Time-variant pleasure travel motivations and behaviors. Journal of Travel Research, 57(4), 437-452. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287517705226.

Wong, K. K., & Chi-Yung, L. (2002). Predicting hotel choice decisions and segmenting hotel consumers: A com-parative assessment of a recent consumer based approach. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 11(1), 17-33.

Yang, X. (2018). How perceived social distance and trust influence reciprocity expectations and eWOM sharing intention in social commerce. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 119(4), 867-880. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-04-2018-0139.

Zhang, M., Lu, J., & Hallman, W. K. (2021) Sharing on Facebook and Face-to-Face What Others do or approve: word-of-mouth driven by social norms. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.712253

Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara, P., Suárez-Acosta, M. A., & Aguiar-Quintana, T. (2014). Hotel guests’ responses to ser-vice recovery: How loyalty influences guest behavior. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 55(2), 152-164. https://doi.org/10.1177/1938965513513348.

Downloads

Published

2025-08-07

How to Cite

Moraes, T. R. M. de, Freire, O. B. D. L., & Silva , F. Q. P. de O. e. (2025). Temporal distance in hotel evaluation and its effects on satisfaction and word-of-mouth. Revista Brasileira De Pesquisa Em Turismo, 19, 3057 . https://doi.org/10.7784/rbtur.v19.3057

Issue

Vol. 19 (2025)

Section

Articles - Tourism Management

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Thais Rodrigues Monteiro, Otávio Bandeira De Lamonica Freire, Filipe Quevedo-Silva

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC BY 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

b. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

c. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).