Cognitive Image, Mental Imagery, and Responses (CI-MI-R): Mediation and Moderation Effects

As intangible experiences are crucial for approach tendencies toward a destination, this research proposes the CI-MI-R framework linking cognitive image (CI) to response (R) via mental imagery (MI). Cosmopolitanism, escapism, and cognitive thinking style are examined as moderators in the relationship between cognitive image and mental imagery. Two studies from USA and Germany confirmed the role of mental imagery as a mediator between cognitive image and tourist response. The three segmentation-based moderators decrease the strength of the link between cognitive image and mental imagery, suggesting that targeting tourists, who are low (high) in cosmopolitanism, escapism, and cognitive thinking style, with cognitive images will be more (less) effective in increasing their mental imagery of the destination and subsequently approach responses.