The influence of big data-enabled price discrimination on tourists’ continuance usage intention to mobile applications: a technology threat avoidance perspective

Though an increasing number of tourists are experiencing big data-enabled price discrimination, the influence of big data-enabled price discrimination on tourists’ continuance usage intention to mobile applications has been largely ignored by existing literature. This is the very first attempt to explore this research topic. Specifically, this paper aims to explore the influence of big data-enabled price discrimination on tourists’ continuance usage intention to mobile applications by extending the technology threat avoidance theory (TTAT). One thousand and two valid questionnaires were collected based on purposive and snowball sampling. Structural equation modelling (SEM) method was used to test the proposed the research model. The findings indicated that both perceived price fairness, threat appraisal, and perceived deception have significant impacts on tourists’ countenance usage intention to the mobile applications after experiencing big data-enabled price discrimination. Threat appraisal was also found to significantly influence avoidance intention and emotion-focused coping. Moreover, this study revealed that avoidance intention significantly impacts emotion-focused coping, while avoidance intention does not significantly influence tourists’ countenance usage intention. Importantly, perceived switching cost moderates two relationships: threat appraisal-continuance usage intention and perceived deception-continuance usage intention. In addition to the theoretical contribution, practical implications are also discussed.