Application of the Extended Theory of Planned Behavior to Understand Holiday Purchase Intention During the COVID-19 Period

Introduction

Coronaviruses (cov) are enveloped, single-stranded positive RNA viruses. They have rod-like extensions on their surfaces. The name “corona” means “crown” in latin. For this reason, these viruses are named as “Coronavirus (crowned virus)”. Coronaviruses were discovered in the 20th century and caused mild respiratory diseases in humans after 1960 (Çiftçi & Çoksüer, 2020: 10). Coronaviruses (Coronavirus-CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause disease for humans and can be detected in some animal species (cat, camel, bat). Starting in 2002 in Guangdong province of China, SARS-CoV spread to 17 countries and 774 people died. MERS-CoV, on the other hand, started in Saudi Arabia in September 2012 and affected 27 countries worldwide, causing 861 people to die (Arslan & Karagül, 2020: 5). In December 2019, pneumonia cases of unknown etiology were encountered in Wuhan, China's Hubei Province. In January 2020, it was determined that the disease agent was a new coronavirus (2019-nCoV) that was not previously detected in humans. Because of its high resemblance to SARSCoV, the disease was named as SARS-CoV-2, and the resulting disease was later named Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) (Tunçok & İncir, 2020).

The “butterfly effect” approach, designed by the US scientist Edward N. Lorenz, provides a perspective in terms of the covid-19 outbreak. Chaos theory, which is the “butterfly effect”, is a theory that is frequently used in understanding the facts and events in social sciences such as psychology, sociology and economics, as well as being a positive science approach such as physics and mathematics. In this assumption, Lorenz gives the example that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in the Amazon Forests can cause a storm in the USA (Arslan & Karagül, 2020: 8). The Covid-19 outbreak in China also created a butterfly effect, causing a global pandemic.

In addition to the health hazards of the Covif-19 epidemic, the social, psychological and economic damages are also numerous. Hospital capacities have increased due to the epidemic, and then, panic feelings have started in people. Every effect produced a reaction. With the social distance rules, many social venues (cafes, restaurants, shopping malls, etc.) have been closed, and the interaction between people has been reduced. Psychological disturbances have occurred in people with social distance rules and fear of getting sick. In addition to psycho-social problems, one of the biggest damages caused by the epidemic was economic damage. Many businesses lost revenue due to the epidemic and had to go bankrupt. The sector most affected by the Covid epidemic was the service sector. The tourism sector, which is a sub-sector of the service sector, was most adversely affected by this epidemic. With the social distance rules, it has become inevitable that the demand for hotel businesses has decreased and the transportation sector is also interrupted in parallel.

The tourism industry has been seriously affected by this crisis since the coronavirus (Covid-19) disease emerged. The main purpose of this study is to expand the planned behavior theory with the fatigue variable, after the pandemic, travel behavior of domestic tourists in Turkey it is to develop a conceptual framework that explains clearly. In addition to the intention variable, attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control components of the planned behavior theory, it can also be affected by physical or psychological fatigue experienced by tourists after the pandemic. On the contrary, tourists may want to escape their routine to travel and experience new experiences in a new place. Escape, refers to the feeling of avoiding routine action; It is associated with both psychological and physical need for peace, relaxation and security (Xu & Chan, 2010). It has been a matter of curiosity whether consumers will permanently change their consumption habits due to social distancing and locking or will they return to their old consumption habits when the global crisis is over. Since there is little research on the holiday purchase intentions of tourists after the epidemic (Akbaba, 2020) this study will fill the gap in the field.