Assessing tourists' cognitive, emotional and behavioural reactions to an unethical destination incident

By Jan Breitsohl, B. Garrod. 2016

204 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Studies of how tourists react to unethical incidents in destinations are scarce. Based on an online survey (n = 1350) and grounded in cognitive appraisal theory, this study examines people's reactions to a hypothetical breach of ethics at a tourism destination. Results from a structural equation model suggest that the more severe the incident and the greater the attribution of responsibility to agencies within the destination, the more likely it is that an individual will develop hostile emotions toward the destination. The tourist may then decide to avoid the incident emotionally or to spread negative word of mouth (WOM) about it. The study also highlights the importance of a positive destination image in reducing hostile emotions during such incidents. Moreover, tourists will be more likely to re-visit a destination if they choose to avoid engaging emotionally with an unethical incident and less likely to do so if they spread negative WOM.

Subfields: Marketing, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/471ae7573a217a162581ea5944079b435d3edbce

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Citations in the corpus

Negative emotions in tourism: a meaningful analysis (2019, background): “Breitsohl and Garrod (2016) found that those experiencing hostility emotions (anger, content, disgust) in response to an unethical incident are more likely to spread negative word-of-mouth and, in turn, are less likely to revisit the destination.”
Developing a Scale to Measure Tourist Perceived Safety (2021, background): “In addition, compared with natural disaster crises, unpredictable and man-made events (e.g., terrorist attacks) may have a more harmful influence on safety perceptions and destination loyalty (Utz, Schultz, and Glocka 2013; Breitsohl and Garrod 2016).”
Emotions in Tourism: Theoretical Designs, Measurements, Analytics, and Interpretations (2020, background): “Consumer behavior studies (Johnson and Stewart 2005; Lefebvre, Hasford, and Wang 2019; Soscia 2007; L. Watson and Spence 2007), tourism research (Breitsohl and Garrod 2016; R. Cai, Lu, and Gursoy 2018; Choi and Choi 2019; Hosany 2012; Jiang 2019; Ma et al. 2013), and emerging studies on residents’…”
The impacts of social and economic crises on tourist behaviour and expenditure: an evolutionary approach (2018, background): “Unlike outbound tourism, the crisis has a bigger influence on inbound tourism (Breitsohl & Garrod, 2016).”