Death and travel: A geo-psychological perspective

Abstract

Travel intentions triggered by mortality salience are shaped by interacting with psychological and environmental forces that both motivate and constrain behavior. This interdisciplinary study adopts a geo-psychological perspective to examine how internal defenses (self-esteem and cultural worldview) and external conditions (disease severity and tourism clustering) jointly influence spatially heterogeneous travel intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Integrating primary survey data with secondary spatial indicators and employing both aspatial and spatial regression analyses, the findings reveal that psychological and environmental factors exert distinct yet interdependent effects on mortality salience-based travel intentions. These relationships vary systematically across space, demonstrating that existential coping responses are not uniformly expressed but conditioned by local contexts. By reconceptualizing travel intention as a spatially embedded coping mechanism, this study extends Terror Management Theory and advances a more context-sensitive understanding of tourism behavior under conditions of existential threat.