Sense of confinement and preferences of virtually-delivered tourism offerings: A tale of two stories

Scholarly focus on virtual tourism's substitutability has traditionally been on inaccessible destinations (e.g. extinct sites, overly-toured places). The COVID-19 pandemic, however, highlighted its relevance for individuals experiencing confinement. This study uses the pandemic as a natural laboratory to explore how a sense of confinement—stemming from either limited mobility (capability-induced) or unmet travel aspirations (aspiration-induced)—influences the acceptance of reality-based, virtually-delivered tourism offerings. This study employed a multi-method approach to address two objectives. One objective is to understand whether and how an individual's sense of confinement plays a role in their virtual tourism adoption intent and their desire to physically visit a destination through the mediation of perceived substitutability. The survey results demonstrate that capability-induced confinement enhances the perceived substitutability of virtual tourism, thereby increasing future adoption intentions. In contrast, aspiration-induced confinement does not exhibit the same effect. Notably, individuals still show a desire to physically visit places they have toured virtually. The other objective is to develop a baseline understanding of what virtual experience design features may be preferred by consumers with various degrees of sense of confinement. The conjoint analysis reveals a strong preference for socialization features in virtual tourism design.