The influence of ending temporal landmark on consumers’ tourism activity preference

This study examines the effect of ending temporal landmark on consumers’ preference for tourism activities and the underlying psychological mechanism. In four experiments, we found that the activation of ending temporal landmark increased consumers’ preference for relaxing tourism activities. The psychological mechanism behind the phenomenon is that the sign of ending time strengthens consumers’ psychological resource exhaustion, leading them to underestimate their own abilities and tend to be risk-averse. This mindset enables the selection of relaxing tourism activities, rather than challenging tourism activities that consume more psychological resources. Consumers’ self-affirmation was found to moderate the relationship between the psychological resource exhaustion and tourism activity preference. In addition, this study found that the effect of ending temporal landmark is present under both real and imagined temporal conditions. This study advances the research progress of temporal landmark and tourism activity preference, and provides marketing enlightenment for tourism product promotion. © 2025 Asia Pacific Tourism Association.