Tourists tend to conform to the majority in their purchase decisions to avoid negative outcomes. Therefore, newly developed yet unpopular tourism destinations are facing difficulty of promotion. On the basis of evolutionary psychology, this study aims to provide a technique of selling unpopular tourism destinations based on tourists’ mating motive, as implied by evolutionary psychology. Many studies have focused on situations when people conform to the majority, whereas a few studies have indicated that individuals also deliberately follow the minority in purchase decisions (Chan et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2012). Research indicates that individuals tend to showcase unique products to attract mates (Chen et al., 2022; Durante & Griskevicius, 2016). Tourists’ mating motive may be activated when their travel decisions are related to mating success. This study hypothesizes that to display differentiation, tourists with activated mating motives are more likely to choose minority-endorsed (vs. majority-endorsed) tourism destinations. Moreover, to verify the evolutionary explanation of tourists’ preference for minority-endorsed destinations, the current study also tests the mediation effect of uniqueness seeking, which has been regarded as a consequence of mating motive and an antecedent of individuals’ disconformity to the majority (Griskevicius, Cialdini, et al., 2006; Imhoff & Erb, 2009). Based on a scenario-based experiment, this study identified the effect of mating motive on tourists’ preference for minority-endorsed tourism destinations. First, tourists’ mating motives positively influence their preference for minority-endorsed tourism destinations. Second, tourists’ uniqueness seeking fully mediates the effect of mating motive on preference for minority-endorsed tourism destinations. The findings inform the tourism industry an effective way to promote unpopular destinations. Tourists are inclined to follow the choice or opinions of others, particularly when tourists are highly uncertain about their decision outcomes. Therefore, tourism marketers usually utilize social clues in their promotion messages such as “popular choice” and “best sellers.” However, newly developed tourism products that lack awareness, though providing high-quality experience, are facing tremendous difficulty of selling. The current study suggests that the less popular destinations can be rebranded and promoted to target romantically motivated tourists.

• Shangzhi Qiu(Xiamen University, China)