When norms signal or threaten: Exploratory evidence from subjective knowledge segments in tourists' acceptance of urban air mobility

초록

This study investigated psychosocial factors associated with tourists' adoption of Urban Air Mobility (UAM), a disruptive technology that transforms travel journeys into experiential products. Drawing on the Elaboration Likelihood Model and the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study examines how personal innovativeness and social influence (i.e., descriptive and injunctive norms) interact to shape behavioral intentions, and how these relationships may vary across subjective UAM knowledge levels. An analysis of 411 respondents using PLS-SEM provides exploratory evidence that personal innovativeness may condition the effects of descriptive and injunctive norms in different ways. Personal innovativeness was negatively associated with the effect of injunctive norms on behavioral intention and showed a weaker, marginally significant positive interaction with descriptive norms. Segment-wise analyses further indicated suggestive patterns across subjective UAM knowledge segments: social-norm-related paths appeared more salient among respondents with lower subjective knowledge, whereas attitude-related associations appeared more central among those with higher subjective knowledge. However, these patterns should be interpreted as exploratory and descriptive rather than as direct evidence of distinct cognitive routes or sequential decision-making stages. The study contributes to UAM and tourism acceptance research by distinguishing descriptive from injunctive norms, examining the conditional role of personal innovativeness, and suggesting that communication strategies may need to vary across subjective knowledge segments. Our findings provide an initial conceptual basis for understanding how associations among social norms, attitudes, and adoption intentions may differ across segments of subjective UAM knowledge.

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