From destination attributes to tourist satisfaction: novelty-seeking as a bridge between liminality and place attachment

This study analyses how destination attributes influence tourist satisfaction via perceived quality, price, and safety, and how these relationships differ by novelty-seeking orientation. Framed at the intersection of liminality and place attachment, novelty-seeking is conceptualised as the behavioural mechanism linking extraordinary experiences to emotional bonds with place, offering the first empirical integration of these frameworks in tourism research. Using data from 1,488 tourists visiting the Algarve (Portugal) in 2022–2023 and Partial Least Squares Multigroup Analysis (PLS-MGA), the results show that for conservative tourists, destination attributes enhance perceived quality, lower perceived prices and safety concerns, and increase satisfaction. For adventurous tourists, satisfaction is driven mainly by perceived price and is negatively affected by in situ safety concerns, indicating that novelty-seekers do not uniformly discount risk. The findings highlight how novelty-seeking conditions cognitive pathways to satisfaction and inform market segmentation strategies aligned with distinct motivational orientations.