The effect of temporal psychological distance on reliance on word-of-mouth for information about destination image attributes

This study examines the effect of temporal psychological distance on travellers’ reliance on three types of word-of-mouth (WOM): traditional WOM (tWOM), social media WOM (SNS-WOM), and online review WOM (OR-WOM) in the search for information related to the relaxation, excitement, cost level, and safety destination image attributes. High and low temporal distance was manipulated using distances of 12 months and 2 months, respectively. A series of t-tests of 283 valid responses (155 and 128 for the 12-month and 2-month scenarios, respectively) shows a significant difference in reliance on tWOM when respondents sought safety attribute information, for SNS-WOM when respondents sought relaxation and safety attribute information, and for OR-WOM when respondents sought relaxation attribute information. Thus, this study shows that in terms of temporal distance, WOM is not a homogeneous block. They have sufficiently different characteristics (e.g. level of tie strength and synchronous/asynchronous modes), which, when they interact with the nature of the destination attributes, results in differing reliance on the three types of WOM under various temporal distances. This study thus contributes to construal level theory research and provides a better understanding of the different characteristics of the three types of WOM.