The Staged Nature of Decision Making among Senior Tourists

This article builds on the idea that senior tourists' decision making is a staged process in which the different choices are sequential, interrelated, and interdependent. These decisions are whether to take a vacation, whether to opt for an international trip, whether to use an organized tour, and whether to use publicly subsidized travel. Considering the social character of many trips offered to seniors, the fourth decision of the proposed process makes it unique. No research has empirically considered using a staged decision making in the context of senior travelers, and the proposed model quantifies the effect of each variable based on the decision the individual is dealing with; also, the way a variable changes its effect even within the same decision stage depending on the individual is analyzed by including heterogeneity into the modeling. The results find that senior tourists follow the proposed four-staged decision-making process rather than the basic two-stage decision-making process.