Responses to Compatriot Tourist Misbehavior: The Importance of Social Identity, Emotions, and Misbehavior Type
基于社会认同理论，通过两个实验研究人们如何回应同胞游客的不当行为，发现内群体偏袒和内群体分化同时存在，情绪起中介作用，不当行为类型有调节作用，为目的地管理提供沟通策略建议。
As destinations recover quickly from the COVID-19 pandemic, the tension caused by tourist misbehavior is coming back to poison the sustainability of tourism development. Guided by the social identity theory, this paper examines how people respond to compatriot tourist misbehavior. It contributes to the literature by studying the psychological mechanism underlying individuals’ calibration of misbehaviors committed by compatriot tourists and predicting downstream intergroup and intragroup consequences of tourist misbehavior. The results of two experiments showed that people displayed ingroup favoritism and intragroup differentiation simultaneously in their responses to compatriot tourists’ misbehavior. Ingroup identification motivated people to exculpate the misbehaving compatriots and carry out prosocial behavior direct at the destination involved, suggesting a double-edged sword. Emotions played mediating roles underlying people’s attitudes and behavioral intentions toward compatriot tourists’ misbehavior. The results also implied the moderating role of misbehavior type. Practically, this paper informs destinations on communication strategies for tourist misbehavior.