Reconfiguring the theory of planned behaviour in digital hospitality: the structural role of brand perception

This study examines the structural role of brand perception within the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) in digitally mediated hospitality environments, using hotel booking intention as the focal outcome. Survey data were collected from 1,431 hotel guests across ten digitally mature metropolitan cities in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Three structural models were tested using SmartPLS 4: a baseline TPB model, a mediation model, and a moderation model. Resultsshow that attitude is the strongest predictor of booking intention ( β = 0.722, f² = 1.08, p .001), while perceived behavioural control ( β = 0.132, f² = 0.04) and subjective norms ( β = 0.081, f² = 0.01) have smaller but significant effects. The model explains 68.8% of the variance in booking intention (R² = 0.688). Brand perception plays a dual structural role: it partially mediates the effects of attitude and subjective norms (indirect β = 0.032 and 0.044, p .001) and significantly moderates the attitude–intention relationship ( β = 0.049, p = .038), but not subjective norms. PLSpredict confirms strong out-of-sample predictive relevance, suggesting that intention formation in digital hospitality is contingently shaped by brand-based cognitive pathways, offering a theoretically grounded extension of TPB in platform-mediated booking contexts.