Do we pay based on our past travel experience? A moderated mediation model of tourists’ willingness to pay

Purpose - This study aims to test the first and second-stage moderating effects of tourists’ past travel experiences on the relationships between national responses, destination trust and tourists’ willingness to pay in the post-pandemic recovery era. Design/methodology/approach - The proposed model was tested with a sample of 398 tourists in Vietnam. The path analysis was applied to investigate the mediating and moderating effects. Findings - The findings emphasise the mediating effect of destination trust in the relationships between national responses and tourists’ willingness to pay. With the moderating effect of past travel experience, all the first-stage indirect effects are significant, but the second-stage indirect effects are significant only at a high level of past travel experience. Originality/value - This study provides theoretical implications for solving the puzzle about the paradox of trust in the government’s responses in the post-pandemic era. Practical implications for destination marketing organisations in the post-pandemic recovery era are then discussed.