How to effectively present “book now, pay later”: the effects of appeal type, temporal distance, and traveler type on attitudes and purchase intentions

In today’s hotel industry, increasingly more hotels offer additional options on their booking websites, such as “book now, pay later.” Despite the prevalence of this phenomenon, methods to present this option more effectively have received limited attention. Using a 2 × 2 × 2 experimental design, this research examines how appeal type (attribute versus benefit appeals) and temporal distance (i.e., time of booking) jointly influence evaluations of the “pay later” option; it also investigates whether the joint effect has a boundary condition. The results demonstrated that leisure travelers planning a trip in the near future had more positive attitudes and greater purchase intentions when the “pay later” option was presented via an attribute appeal rather than a benefit appeal. However, leisure travelers planning a trip in the distant future did not exhibit such differences in attitudes and purchase intentions. Furthermore, this research revealed that the joint effect of appeal type and temporal distance was evident only for leisure travelers but not for business travelers.