How does negative destination publicity influence residents’ shame and quality of life? The moderating role of perceived destination resilience

Abstract

Destination management organizations (DMOs) increasingly focus on enhancing residents’ quality of life. A key driver of this trend is that the quality of life of a destination’s residents is closely linked to sustainable development in it. While DMOs recognized that negative destination publicity seriously undermines the sustainable development of tourist destinations, the negative impact on local residents and how to mitigate the negative impact have not been paid little attention. In light of this, the present paper contributes to knowledge by analyzing the effect of negative destination publicity on local residents’ emotions and quality of life. Four scenario-based experiments were performed to test hypothesized relationships. Findings revealed that value-related negative destination publicity leads to a higher level of shame and lower level of quality of life for residents than performance-related negative destination publicity. They also revealed that high perceived destination resilience can attenuate the effects and low perceived destination resilience strengthens them. The findings, as well as enriching the literature on negative destination publicity, can guide practitioners to improve perceived destination resilience to attenuate negative impacts on residents.

Keywords:

• Negative destination publicity
• shame
• destination resilience
• quality of life
• residents

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.71974206; 72174213; 71774176).

Notes on contributors

Lujun Su

Lujun Su is a professor of marketing at the School of Business at the Central South University, China. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Tourism Management from Xiamen University, China. Dr. Su's research interests include tourist loyalty behavior, destination marketing, and destination management. He has published 80 referred articles in scholarly journals, such as Tourism Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, and Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing.

Huixuan Chen

Huixuan Chen is a doctoral candidate in the School of Business at the Central South University, China. Her research interests focus on tourist behavior and destination management.

Yinghua Huang

Yinghua Huang is an associate professor at Department of Hospitality, Tourism and Event Management, San José State University, USA. She received her Ph.D. in Hotel and Restaurant Administration from Oklahoma State University, USA. Her research interests include destination marketing, place attachment, service management and research methods. Dr. Huang has published more than 20 referred articles in scholarly journals, such as Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, among others.