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Abstract

Shopping has become a determinant factor , which affect s destination choice. The emerging concept of shopping tourism is defined as “a contemporary form of tourism fostered by individuals for whom purchasing goods outside of their usual environment is a determining factor in their decision to travel” ( The United Nations World Tourism Organization, 2014 , p.13 ). Shopping is one of the oldest tourist activities ( Genuens, Vantomme, & Brengman, 2004 ) and commonly accounts for the majo r expenditure of travel budget s (Murphy, Moscardo, Benckendorff, & Pearce, 2011). Thus, d estination marketing organizations (DMOs) devote tremendous efforts into promoting destination s as convenient places to maximize the arrival of shopping tourists . Generally , people are driven to participate in reasonable shopping behavior without e xception . R egulatory focus theory (RFT) , first proposed by Higgins (1997) , claims that people have two distinct motivation system s , namely , promotion focus and prevention focus. The se two self - regulatory motivational systems are involved in the decision - making process and are focused on self - regulation toward desired end - states. Hosmer (1995) found that trust is related to promotion focus. Hence, building trust toward shopping destination s is expected to positively affect tourist s’ shopping behaviors. In other words, shopping tourists are likely to choose trustworthy shopping destination s, driving them to adjust their promotion focus (i.e. , hopes and accomplishments in shopping) and prevention focus (i.e. , security and safety in shopping ) to arrive at a re asonable decision. This idea reflects the natural human tendency to avoid or minimize risks (Chen & Dhillon, 2003). McKnight and Chervany (2002) viewed trust as a mechanism for reducing the complexity of human behavior in a situation that involves uncertainty. From this perspective, trust performs the important function of reducing the complexity of information and the perceptions of risk in a given transaction. Despite the importance of trust in promoting shopping destination s , no research has yet to fully explore this topic . S pecifically, the underly ing dimensions of shopping destination trust and the most influential dimensions in forming trustworthy shopping destination s have not been identified. Therefore, the purpose of th e current study is to develop and validate the measurement properties of a scale , which measures shopping destination trust. A multi - staged development study was conducted to develop a measurement instrument for shopping destination trust . The procedure suggested by Churchill (1979) for developing measures of marketing constructs and the recommendations of Hinkins (1995) for improving the scale development process provide d guidance for th e present research. In addition, the guidelines provided by Anderson and Gerbing (1988) fo r establishing measurement reliabilities , as well as previous scale development studies , were also referenced (Wong & Wan, 2013; Choi & Sirakaya, 2005; Kim, Ritchie, & 1 McCormick, 2012). With regard s the specification of construct domains and generation of initial items, a set of 48 items related to the 11 construct domains (i.e., “ benevolence , ” “ integrity , ” “ competence , ” “ predictability , ” “ ability , ” “ transactional security , ” “ informational content , ” “ reputation , ” “ prod uct , ” “ liking , ” and “ risk avoidance ” ) was initially generated from a review of existing research on shopping and trust. Modifications were made to the items in each dimension in the context of shopping tourism. By refining the instrument, 48 final items were obtained for data collection. The target sample was shopping tourist s . Two rigorous screening questions were selected based on the definition of shopping tourism (UNWTO, 2014). Through convenience sampling, 708 usable sample s were collected in the summer of 2014 in Hong Kong. Subsequently , purification of the measurement scale (e.g., exploratory factor analysis), assessment of the latent structure (e.g., confirmatory factor analysis), and scale validation (e.g., validation of the developed scale and invariance tests) were conducted separate ly . The results reveal that shopping destination trust consists of ten dimensions , namely: “ benevolence , ” “ integrity , ” “ competence , ” “ predictability , ” “ability , ” “ transactional security , ” “ reputation , ” “ prod uct , ” “liking , ” and “risk avoidance . ” In particular, the results confirm that “ability” is the most influential dimension that influences shopping destination trust , followed by “competence” and “integrity . ” The results are consistent with those of previous stud ies on shopping and trust in th e marketing context ( Zhou & Tian, 2010; Gefen & Straub, 2004; Gefen, Karahanna, & Straub, 2006). The current study contributes to the establishment of a new construct, namely, shopping destination trust. Considering that no previous research has attempted to investigate the dimensions of shopping destination trust, this study is expected to shed light on potential research topics in the field of shopping tourism. Furthermore, the findings from the current study do not only fill the ga ps from previous studies on shopping tourism, but also provide recommendations for DMOs.

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