When joy turns inward: how tourists’ joyful experience shapes agreeableness traits through tourist engagement in religious tourism

Although travel-related studies have generally explored how tourists’ experience promotes engagement, satisfaction and loyalty, little is known about whether perceived joyful- experience can shape engagement and personality-related agreeableness traits in religious tourism. Addressing this gap, following hedonic theory, we examine how tourists’ perceived joyful experience predicts tourist engagement, which, in turn, shapes agreeableness-related traits – patience, forgiveness and gentleness in religious tourism destinations. We also investigate the mediating role of tourist engagement and the moderating effect of visiting duration on agreeableness traits in the religious tourism context of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030. Using a cross-sectional survey design, we finalised 248 valid responses from religious visitors to Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia. Findings highlight that a higher perceived joyful experience enhances tourist engagement and positively influences agreeableness traits (i.e. forgiveness, gentleness and patience). Visiting duration was found to significantly moderate the relationship between engagement and forgiveness/gentleness traits. The research underlines the importance of joyful experience/engagement by offering important implications for travel research and practices in religious tourism.