Article Travel arrangement as a moderator in image–satisfaction–behavior relations: An investigation of Chinese outbound travelers Xiaoming Liu and Jun Justin Li University of Macau, China Yan Yang East China University of Science and Technology, China Abstract With more and more destinations relying on repeat travelers, the inclination of tourists to revisit some destinations has become a significant topic of study. Therefore, the reasons for travelers’ revisits have been addressed in many research studies. These studies have determined several factors of the revisit inclination, such as satisfaction, destination image, and perceived quality. However, in most of the pre- vious studies about the relationships among the destination image and tourists’ satisfaction, as well as their behavioral intentions to the destination, the moderating variables were not considered. Conse- quently, we analyzed the moderator effects of certain characteristics of different travel arrangements on the theoretical relationship among the destination image, tourists’ satisfaction, and their behavioral intentions to the destination. This article first identifies the similarities and differences among these two types of Chinese outbound travelers in terms of their demographic and trip characteristics. It then confirms that these two types of travelers differ in terms of the relationships among perceived destina- tion images, satisfaction level, and future behavioral intentions using an invariance test of structural model. According to the multiple group cause-and-effect analysis, the results show that travel arrange- ment can largely affect either the relations between destination image and tourists’ satisfaction or their behavioral intentions. Moreover, the relationship between either destination image and tourists’ satisfaction or their behavioral intentions is generally stronger for independent visitors. Finally, the influences are discussed from both theoretical and practical perspective. Keywords Behavioral intentions, destination image, moderator effect, overall satisfaction, travel arrangement Introduction With the increment of personal disposable incomes and increasingly relaxed limitations to outbound travel, Mainland Chinese visitors have become one of the more important markets in outbound tourisms. In the last decade, the quantity of Mainland Chinese outbound tourists (herein- after referred to as MCOTs) booms at the average annual growth rate of roughly 20% and reached 83 million in 2012 (UNWTO, 2013). Moreover, with the expenditure of nearly US$129 billion in 2013, MCOTs continue to be the largest market. Consequently, many outbound destinations are Corresponding author: Jun Justin Li, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macau, Av. Padre Toma ´s Pereira Taipa, Macau 00853, China. Email: yb07001@umac.mo Journal of Vacation Marketing 2015, Vol. 21(3) 225–236 ª The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1356766714567797 jvm.sagepub.com at FLORIDA STATE UNIV LIBRARY on September 15, 2015 jvm.sagepub.com Downloaded from