Achieving Immersion in the Tourism Experience: The Role of Autonomy, Temporal Dissociation, and Reactance

In the past two decades, research in tourism has explored the shift to the experiential economy in which consumers (visitors) seek memorable experiences. While prior studies converge toward the idea that immersion is a critical dimension of the tourism experience, research on immersion remains scarce, particularly the conditions under which immersion is achieved and its consequences on visitor evaluations. To fill this gap, this research builds on the experiential and flow literature to propose a model where immersion derives from autonomy and leads to greater visitor satisfaction through the underlying mechanism of temporal dissociation. Additionally, it is proposed that reactance moderates the relationship between autonomy and temporal dissociation. Two empirical studies—a field study in an experiential wine museum and an experiment involving a zoo visit—provide robust evidence of these effects, fostering theoretical progress on immersion and subsequent temporal dissociation as important dimensions of the tourism experience.