Integrating the Theory of Planned Behaviour and the Expectation-Confirmation Theory to Explain Domestic Tourists’ Revisit Intention: Evidence from Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

Understanding why tourists decide to return to a destination requires theoretical frameworks that capture both the cognitive, control-oriented dimensions of behavioural intention and the affective, expectation-based dimensions of post-consumption evaluation. This study integrates Ajzen’s (1991) Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) with Oliver’s (1980) Expectation-Confirmation Theory (ECT) to explain local tourists’ revisit intention to Cameron Highlands, Malaysia, treating value perception, safety and security, and destination accessibility as control-belief-relevant destination attributes, and tourist satisfaction as the expectation-confirmation mechanism linking these attributes to behavioural intention. Data collected from 200 domestic tourists using a structured questionnaire and analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. The integrated model demonstrated good fit to the data. Consistent with TPB, value perception, safety and security, and destination accessibility each exerted significant effects on tourist satisfaction, functioning as control-belief-relevant antecedents. Consistent with ECT, tourist satisfaction, as the expectation-confirmation construct, significantly predicted revisit intention and mediated the effects of all three antecedents, with the mediation pattern varying by attribute: partial mediation for value perception and safety and security, but full mediation for destination accessibility. These results demonstrate that TPB and ECT are not competing explanations of tourist behaviour but complementary accounts that operate jointly, and in attribute-specific combinations, to shape revisit intention. The findings extend the applied scope of both theories to Malaysian highland ecotourism and offer a theoretically grounded account of why some destination improvements translate into loyalty more directly than others.

Theory of Planned Behaviour, Expectation-Confirmation Theory, tourist satisfaction, revisit intention, structural equation modelling

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