Impact of Tourist Phygital Experience on Tourist Visit Intention: Role of Parasocial Interaction

The study examines how a tourist's phygital experience influences the intention to visit a destination. Building on parasocial interaction and consumer dissonance theory, this study focuses on the serial mediation process through cognitive reappraisal and tourist skepticism. This research considers parasocial interaction as a moderating variable. The study used a quantitative approach to analyze the data gathered from a survey ( N = 291) of Indian tourists. It adopted a structural equation modeling technique to examine the results using SPSS AMOS v25 and SPSS Process Macro. The findings demonstrate that tourist phygital experience impacts tourist visit intention through the mediating role of cognitive reappraisal. The moderation effect of parasocial interaction with tourist skepticism as a mediator is insignificant in the association between tourist phygital experience and tourist visit intention. This research is embryonic, contributing to the literature on tourist phygital experience by exploring tourist visit intention.