Impacts of Service Failures Existing in the Travel Chain on the Cognitive, Emotional and Behavioral Responses of Disabled Tourists: From an Embodiment Perspective

This study examined the impacts of service failures existing in the travel chain on the cognitive, emotional and behavioral responses of disabled tourists using the principles of affective events theory. It also examined the differences among these impacts from the embodiment perspective. A total of 298 questionnaires were collected from carefully selected samples. After removing 9 incomplete ones, 289 questionnaires were used for the final data analysis. The major findings were as follows: 1) Service failure had a significant positive impact on the cognitive evaluation of disabled tourists according to the degree of their basic unmet needs. 2) Service failure did not have a significant impact on the negative emotions of disabled tourists, but their cognitive evaluation did. 3) The negative emotions of disabled tourists had a significant impact on their complaint behaviors, but had no impact on cognitive evaluation. 4) The group that was divided according to their embodied conditions did not show any significant differences in relationships among service failure and their following responses. The theoretical, practical and future implications of theses results were then discussed. Finally, future directions for further research are suggested.