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Home / Tourism Review International, Volume 26, Number 3

The One Where Nostalgia Backfires: Evidence from Theme Parks

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As theme parks seek more opportunities in using intellectual properties to redesign their services, this study explores the potential impacts of such modifications on consumers' attitudes towards the theme parks. More specifically, it investigates the joint effects of service redesign, nostalgia, and consumer expertise on consumers' brand love for theme parks. The results suggest when theme parks undergo service redesign, nostalgia may play a negative role in predicting consumers' brand love. Moreover, nostalgia and consumer expertise may have joint negative effects on brand love when theme parks undergo service redesign. This study contributes to the hospitality literature by contrasting past studies that display the positive effects of nostalgia in influencing consumer behaviors and suggests the potential drawbacks of nostalgia in the service industry. It also illustrates nostalgia is an intricate marketing tool for the industry.

Keywords: BRAND LOVE; CONSUMER EXPERTISE; INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY; NOSTALGIA; SERVICE REDESIGN; THEME PARK

Document Type: Research Article

Affiliations: 1: Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA 2: ;Department of Human Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA 3: Rosen College of Hospitality Management, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA 4: Division of Programs in Business, New York University, NY, USA

Publication date: October 5, 2022

This article was made available online on July 19, 2022 as a Fast Track article with title: "The One Where Nostalgia Backfires: Evidence from Theme Parks".

More about this publication?
  • Tourism Review International is a peer-reviewed journal that advances excellence in all fields of tourism research, promotes high-level tourism knowledge, and nourishes cultural awareness in all sectors of the tourism industry by integrating industry and academic perspectives. Its international and interdisciplinary nature ensures that the needs of those interested in tourism are served by documenting industry practices, discussing tourism management and planning issues, providing a forum for primary research and critical examinations of previous research, and by chronicling changing tourism patterns and trends at the local, regional and global scale.

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