Personality and travel intentions during and after the COVID-19 pandemic: An artificial neural network (ANN) approach

Shalini Talwar; Shalini Srivastava; Mototaka Sakashita; Nazrul Islam; Amandeep Dhir

doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.12.002

Personality and travel intentions during and after the COVID-19 pandemic: An artificial neural network (ANN) approach

J Bus Res. 2022 Mar:142:400-411. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.12.002. Epub 2021 Dec 8.

Authors

Shalini Talwar¹, Shalini Srivastava², Mototaka Sakashita³, Nazrul Islam⁴, Amandeep Dhir^{5

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Affiliations

¹ K J Somaiya Institute of Management, Somaiya Vidyavihar University, Mumbai, India.
² Jaipuria Institute of Management, Noida, India.
³ Graduate School of Business Administration, Keio University, Japan.
⁴ Department of Science, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship, University of Exeter Business School, England, UK.
⁵ Department of Management, School of Business & Law, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway.
⁶ Optentia Research Focus Area, North-West University, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa.

Abstract

The tourism sector has been deeply ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic as many individuals abstained entirely from travel. Thus, before contemplating the trajectory of the sector's recovery, it is essential to understand individuals' travel intentions both during and after the pandemic. The present study contributes in this regard by examining the impact of individuals' personality traits categorised by the five-factor model, or the Big Five, on their leisure travel intentions during and after the pandemic. To this end, we utilised an artificial neural network (ANN) approach to analyse 500 responses from individuals residing in Japan. The results reveal that extraversion has the strongest relative influence on intentions to travel during the pandemic, whereas openness to experience has the strongest influence on travel intentions after the pandemic. This study is the first of its kind to examine the influence of the Big Five personality traits on travel intentions in the context of a pandemic.

Keywords: Artificial neural network; Big Five personality traits; Non-linearity; Tourism sector; Travel intentions.