Role of Airport Physical Environments in the Satisfaction Generation Process: Mediating the Impact of Traveller Emotion

As the use of international airports has been increasing, airports have emerged as a remarkable background in the tourism industry. To address this, the present study aimed at (1) investigating the relationships among the variables of airport physical environments, customer emotion, and satisfaction, (2) verifying which attribute of airport physical environments has significant impact on customer emotion, and (3) examining the mediating role of emotion between airport physical environments and customer satisfaction. The snowball method was introduced to collect the data. According to the findings from the structural analysis, three components of airport physical environments had decisive effects on pleasure. However, most of airport physical environments were insignificant on arousal, and arousal had invalid impact on satisfaction. Customer emotion was found as a partial mediator between the identical attributes of airport physical environments and customer satisfaction. Discussions and implications for airport practitioners, limitations, and suggestions for future research were also provided.