Beyond the Contemporary Understanding of Travel Intention Dynamics: An Experimental Study to Uncover the Dimensions of Tourist Behavior in the 21st Century from the Contexts of Destination Stereotypes and Perceived Social Return

The objective of this study is to assess how factors like destination stereotypes and perceived social return are associated with the formation of perceived destination image and behavioral intentions of tourists through an extensive between-subjects experimental study. The authors aim to adopt a holistic approach to demonstrate the influence and significance of the key elements of this study by using destination stereotype and social return as two key interventions to be applied on the potential respondents representing tourists residing in the US. If the collected data from the experiments proves the proposed mechanism to be significant, this study is expected to contribute to the existing literature by adding a unique angle in measuring the behavioral intentions of contemporary tourists and offer some practical recommendations for the DMOs to attenuate the adverse impacts of destination stereotypes by incorporating modern-day elements like social media use and perceived social return.