An involvement-based approach to accountability measurement for a tourism destination marketing organization

The objectives of this dissertation were: (1) formulate and test a theory for leisure travel advertising accountability; and (2) estimate economic impacts of advertising.; The involvement construct from consumer behavior theory was used to examine reactions to advertising from a state tourism office. According to the theory, travelers with greater involvement are more attentive and process information more fully. The degree of involvement among travelers to a destination has marketing implications for that destination.; A two path model of information reception and processing was proposed. The low involvement pathway suggest consumers subconsciously or consciously process perceptual message ques which the recipient relates to temporal feelings for the advertising source. The second, high involvement pathway, suggests consumers give cognitive attention to the advertising message. A decision not to travel, travel intent, or travel result from either pathway. Cognitive and behavioral measures were used to test processing via both pathways.; Unaided brand preference, advertising recall and trip length significantly contributed to explaining the variance in respondents perceptions of the desirability of the travel destination (r-square.08) implying high involvement processing. However, planning activity did not contribute to the explained variance.; Trip length did not vary significantly among groups of travelers with different levels of advertising recall. Positive feelings about the advertising were significantly related to travel intent but not related to ratings of destination desirability. Distance traveled did not significantly contribute to explained variance. These findings suggest that many visitors to Texas have low involvement with their trip.; The total economic impact for the advertising over a two year period was {dollar}791.7 million from the selected target markets. The return on investment calculated based upon the two year spot media budget was {dollar}401.87. The most conservative return on investment calculated based upon the total state tourism office budget for two years was {dollar}38.80.; The Destination Advertising Accountability Model provides a theoretically based alternative to traditional advertising tracking studies and is inclusive of all traveling consumers. Alternative measures to operationalize the domains of involvement should be sought to improve the explanatory power of the model.