Tourist Destination

Abstract

Despite decades of scholarship on destination choice, satisfaction, and loyalty, the question of why tourists deliberately refuse, avoid, or boycott destinations has remained conceptually fragmented. Multiple overlapping constructs  (destination rejection, avoidance, boycott, repulsion, and non-visitation intention) circulate in the literature without consistent definitional boundaries. This paper does not claim to establish a new independent research domain; rather, it performs an integrative conceptual clarification: a typological refinement that specifies the distinct psychological mechanisms, antecedent structures, and management implications of each form of negative destination behaviour. Drawing on a systematic review and conceptual synthesis of 29 peer-reviewed studies published between 2010 and 2026, conducted in accordance with PRISMA 2020 guidelines (Page et al., 2021), the paper identifies four thematically and mechanistically distinct clusters: (1) active destination rejection, (2) protective/risk-based avoidance, (3) moral/political boycott, and (4) negative image-based passive non-selection. Two theoretically primary mechanisms are designated: Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) for risk-based avoidance, and Social Identity Theory (SIT) for boycott and identity-based rejection. Six additional theoretical frameworks serve as complementary rather than co-equal explanatory resources. Two exploratory effect-size syntheses are reported in Appendix C as illustrative material  ( not as meta-analytic claims ) noting that full pooling was not feasible due to limited effect-size comparability across studies. The most important practical implication is type-specificity: the management response to moral/political boycott must be fundamentally different from the response to risk-based avoidance or passive non-selection. Implications for DMOs and an eight-priority future research agenda are provided.