Examining the effect of potential tourists’ wine product involvement on wine tourism destination image and travel intention

Product involvement refers to consumers’ perceived relevance of the importance of a product category based on their inherent needs, values and interests. The literature has examined the mechanism of product involvement and tourist behaviour, but has paid less attention to the role of destination image in the effect of product involvement on tourist behaviour. In China, various cultural tourism destinations are favoured by consumers because of product involvement. However, no studies have focused on the influence of cultural product involvement on potential tourists’ intention to visit cultural destinations. This study proposes a model in the context of Chinese culture, to explore the relationships among wine product involvement, destination wine image, destination cognitive image, destination affective image and potential tourists’ willingness to travel. The partial least squares technique and multiple mediation analyses are used to analyse data from 378 potential tourists from China. The findings show that the influence of the potential tourists’ wine product involvement on travel intention involves a mixed process about their cognitive and affective image perceptions. Wine product involvement indirectly increases their travel intention by strengthening their perceived destination wine image, destination cognitive image and destination affective image.