Culture-sensitive tourists are more price insensitive

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the effect of the cultural interest manifested by tourists when planning a vacation on their sensitivity to price. The proposed hypothesis states that tourist price sensitivity is moderated, at the moment of choosing a destination, by cultural interest. For this purpose, we measure and identify tourists' price sensitivities-individual by individual-from real choices, i.e., tourist price sensitivity is estimated for each individual by observing the destination she actually selects. The empirical application is carried out on a sample of 2,127 individuals, and the operative formalization used to estimate individual price sensitivities follows a Random-Coefficient Logit Model; and to detect the way these sensitivities relate to the search for culture, an ANOVA procedure is employed. The results show an incremental effect of cultural interest on tourist price insensitivity; i.e., people looking for culture find their price sensitivity moderated by this interest in such a way that the negative effect of price diminishes. Also, we further explore these culture-interested tourists by a segmentation analysis, identifying five segments with different price sensitivities-one of them even showing certain high-price proneness.