Social comparison orientation and religious commitment influence on outbound travel intentions

ABSTRACT Tourists frequently engage in social comparison to track their success or assess their relative self-worth. Although the link between social comparison and travel behavior is evident in the marketing and tourism literature, the effect of social comparison orientation (SCO) on outbound travel intentions and its interplay with travel motivation, especially among religious or spiritually conscious tourist segments, remains unclear. Drawing on social comparison theory and the Stimuli-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, this study developed a conceptual model to examine the role of SCO, travel motivations, and religious commitment (RC) in shaping tourists' outbound travel intentions. This study adopted convenience sampling to collect survey data (n = 469) from Brunei Darussalam. The proposed model was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) and multiple-group analysis (MGA) in AMOS 23.0 software. Findings revealed that SCO significantly affects intentions to travel abroad. This further demonstrates that push and pull factors of travel motivation mediate the SCO's effect on travel intentions, while tourists' religious commitment moderates the effect of SCO on overseas travel intentions. This study extends prior works on tourism marketing and the S-O-R framework by demonstrating how SCO influences tourists' responses to international tourism through travel motivation. It offers a unique understanding of the role of SCO on international travel behavior (symbolic or status-oriented consumption) from the perspective of religious influence. Theoretical and managerial implications and future research areas are also discussed.