Fear of Missing Out in Tourism: A Scale Development

This study aims to develop a valid and reliable scale to measure Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) in the tourism context and assess its psychometric properties. Based on Przybylski et al.'s (2013) original FoMO scale, a tourism-specific version was created to evaluate symptoms such as fear of losing social connections, concerns about others having more satisfying experiences, and anxiety about missing important social events in tourism. During scale development, content validity analyses were conducted to assess item validity and linguistic adequacy. Exploratory factor analysis, internal consistency, and discriminant validity analyses were performed to examine construct validity and reliability. As a result of the analysis, it was revealed the Fear of Missing Out in Tourism (FoMO-T) scale consists of three dimensions and nine items: Fear of Losing Social Connections, the Idea of Others Having Better Experiences, and the Need to Learn and Share Information. This study provides a scale for understanding FoMO’s impact on tourism behavior and highlights the importance of the FoMO phenomenon for the tourism sector.