How do personality traits affect visitor’s experience, emotional stimulation and behaviour? The case of wine tourism

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderation effects of the Big Five personality traits on the relationships between holistic experience constructs (i.e. servicescape and other visitors’ behaviours), emotional responses and revisit intention in the context of winery visitation experiences in Greece. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a holistic approach to visitor experience and suggests that visitors base their experience perception on the servicescape’s attributes and other visitors’ suitable behaviours. Path analysis was adopted to measure the impact of these constructs on visitors’ emotions and the role these emotions play in predicting visitors’ revisit intentions. The moderation effect of the Big Five personality traits in such relationships was examined using the SPSS PROCESS. A self-administered, highly structured questionnaire was distributed to winery visitors in Greece; a total of 615 responses were used in data analysis. Findings The results indicate that all the examined relationships become stronger as a result of visitors having high or average scores for openness, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness, or low scores for neuroticism. Research limitations/implications The findings enhance the existing literature pertaining to experiential marketing, wine tourism marketing and the role of personality in tourism by providing new insights. Practical implications The overall findings may benefit wineries in their efforts to carry out the following: increase visitors’ revisit intentions; design and manage the winery environment and the winery experience effectively; and design marketing strategies. Originality/value The paper’s originality lies in providing information to clarify the role of visitors’ personalities as a contributing factor to their emotional stimulation and their revisit intentions in terms of both constructs of experience (i.e. servicescape and other visitors’ behaviours). Furthermore, this study attempts to respond to recent calls to conduct multidimensional research on the servicescape construct, focusing on both the substantive staging of the servicescape and the communicative staging of the servicescape. Finally, the present study provides new and practical insights regarding the winery experience in the Greek context – an area where very limited research has been conducted so far.