Generative AI as a Scaffold in Travel Decision-Making: A Conceptual Framework

Tourism decision-making is cognitively demanding. Travelers navigate fragmented information, coordinate interdependent choices amid uncertainty, and sustain planning. Although generative artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in travel decision-making, tourism research has not explained how it alters the cognitive organization of decision-making. This article presents a framework theorizing generative AI as a scaffold across travel decision-making. The framework encompasses three pathways: mitigating executive load by structuring information and managing task-related demands; supporting psychological processing balance across intuitive, deliberate, and reflective modes; and sustaining decision continuity across iterative planning cycles. Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) tendencies serve as a theory-revealing case, where pronounced variation in executive function brings mechanisms into sharp relief. Grounded in task-based interviews with 30 UK adults, the framework extends tourism decision-making theory by explaining how generative AI redistributes cognitive work between travelers and digital systems and reorients AI design from efficiency optimization toward individualized cognitive and emotional support. Also available in Korean and Bahasa Indonesia.