Impact of Personality Traits on Choices: The Mechanism of Openness and Conscientiousness on the Adoption of AI Travel Planning among Young Chinese Tourists

This study focuses on the actual choice behavior of young Chinese tourists (aged 18–35) in travel planning, referring specifically to their preference for Artificial Intelligence (AI)-dominant, human-generated content (HGC)-dominant, or mixed-use travel planning strategies. It investigates how these behavioral preferences are influenced by two core personality traits, Openness and Conscientiousness, through cognitive appraisal. Based on 336 valid questionnaires, this research constructs and empirically tests a mediation model of "personality trait → cognitive appraisal → behavioral choice", finding that openness positively predicts the preference of AI-dominant planning, while conscientiousness predicts the preference of HGC-dominant information sourcing. Such influences of personality traits are partially mediated by perceived usefulness of AI and perceived reliability of HGC. Meanwhile, users are divided into three groups showing systematic gradient differences in their cognitive evaluations. This work not only provides a new explanation path in view of the crucial repositioning of personality traits from mere moderators to stable antecedents within technology acceptance, but also offers empirical evidence for the tourism platform to implement personalized marketing and differentiated service design.