Self-Congruence and Tourist Happiness: The Mediating Role of Positive Emotions and Meaning

Although a considerable number of earlier studies have empirically investigated the effects of self-congruity on various constructs such as motivation, revisit intention, word-of-mouth, and evaluation of a destination (e.g. Usakli and Baloglu, 2011; Tassiello and Tillotson, 2020; Šegota, Chen and Golja, 2021), the direct and indirect relationship between self-congruity and tourist happiness remain under-investigated in tourism and hospitality settings (Sirgy, 2019). Therefore, to fill this gap in the literature, drawing on marketing, psychology, and tourism literature, the present study aims to investigate the relationship between self-congruity and tourist happiness via the influence of positive emotions (hedonia) and meaning (eudaimonia). The integrative model was tested using data generated from a convenient sample of 460 tourists from USA. Using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), a powerful multivariate statistical analysis technique, the results statistically confirm that actual and ideal self-congruity influence tourist happiness and the conditions necessary for mediation are supported