Cultural Mindsets Matter: Reexamining the End Effect in Tourism Experiences

Abstract

Understanding the relationships between momentary episodes and overall evaluation is integral to creating tourist experiences because service providers strive to maximize positive outcomes and minimize negative ones. Past work has shown that the end experience outweighs other episodes (e.g., the start experience) when forming retrospective judgments, referred to as “the end effect.” Although researchers have paid considerable attention to the end effect in tourist experience evaluation, their findings are mixed and need to be further clarified. This research reconciles the inconsistency by examining the moderating role of cultural mindsets on the weight of end experience in overall evaluation. Across three experiments, this research reveals that the end experience is heavily weighted for tourists with an individualistic mindset but less so for those with a collective mindset. These findings help to explain the inconsistency in the literature and provide practical implications for destination marketing.