THE IMPORTANCE OF ANTICIPATED EMOTIONS IN THE INTENTION TO DO THE CAMINO DE SANTIAGO.

• Author: Duran, M.

1. Introduction

   The history of the Camino de Santiago dates back to King alfonso II's pilgrimage from Oviedo to venerate the remains of Apostle St James found in Compostela. thus officially becoming the first pilgrim and inaugurating the route of the so-called Camino Primitivo [Primitive Way]. From the eighth century to the present, an endless stream of walkers of different races, ages, gender, continents and social status have come to Santiago de Compostela (Spain) along the different routes, carrying motivations of different types in their backpacks: some recreational, others religious and for many it is a combination of both. The aim of this work is to ascertain the variables that have a bearing on the intention to do the Camino de Santiago, taking into account that in recent years and according to the data collected in the Office of the Pilgrim of Santiago de Compostela (Galicia, Spain), participation has been increasing exponentially, making the different routes of the Camino de Santiago among the world's most travelled. From psychology in general, and from social psychology in particular, our interest lies in determining the variables that influence the intention to do the Camino de Santiago and discovering which of them are involved in its undertaking, i.e. what exactly drives or encourages pilgrims to walk hundreds of kilometres to earn their Compostela pilgrimage certificate.

   As Bosnjak, Ajzen, and Schmidt (2020) point out, from a psychosocial perspective, one of the theories that have provided the greatest empirical support for the explanation of the intention of conduct has been the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). In accordance with this theory, the immediate determinant of behaviour is behavioural intention. This, in turn, is determined by the attitude towards the behaviour, the subjective norm and perceived behavioural control. Nonetheless, there are factors which can limit the subjects' desire to follow a determined behaviour. Accordingly, perceived control, along with intention, is also considered to be an immediate determinant of behaviour.

   One further advantage of the TPB is its capacity for incorporating additional relevant influences. Since the formulation of the theory, a large number of studies have been conducted which have included different variables with the aim of increasing the explanatory power thereof. In this work, additional emotional variables have been incorporated, given that they have functioned in other studies, those referred to above, and to date have never been included in the scope of study of the Camino de Santiago.

   Here, it should be noted that the consideration of emotions in the setting of this theory is not new. Ajzen himself, in a study from 2013 in collaboration with Sheikh, examined the 'anticipated emotion' variable within the framework of the TBP Despite these authors concluding that this variable has a significant bearing on intent, they also assert that its contribution is merely residual, meaning that it would not require a measure of its own as it would be included in the measure of attitude. However, the behavioural intent studied here can have a high emotional involvement that is difficult to address in its entirety from a socio-cognitive model, such as the TBP, which considers the individual from a basically rational perspective. In the setting of social psychology, recent studies support the inclusion of emotional variables into the original model (Duran, Ferraces, Rodriguez, and Sabucedo 2016, Duran, Ferraces, Rodriguez, Rio, and Sabucedo 2017).

   Moral norm differs from the subjective norm insofar as the latter is subject to self-approval and not to the approval of others. Owing to the characteristics of the behaviour studied here, and the existence of certain studies that have found a modest, although direct and significant contribution with the intention of carrying out other kinds of intentions by introducing this variable into the explanation of the model (Jellema, Abraham, Schaalma, Gebhardt, and Empelen 2013, Duran et al. 2016), it was also decided to incorporate it in the proposal for our explanatory model.

   Owing to the foregoing, the principal objectives of this study can be specified as follows : 1) to ascertain the contribution of variables inherent in TBP in the explanation of the intention to undertake the Camino de Santiago; 2) to ascertain the possible...