Exploring antecedents and consequences of tourists’ perceived relationship investment from new perspectives in the tour group context

ABSTRACT

This study attempts to emphasize perceived relationship investment (PRI) in the tour group context and broaden its antecedents and consequences from new perspectives. Specifically, it explores how tour guides’ appropriate humor (TGAH) influences tourists’ PRI through service quality perception and how tourists’ PRI enhances tourist citizenship behavior (TCB) through tourist trust. Structural equation modeling is applied to analyze 352 questionnaires collected from tour group tourists. Findings indicate that TGAH is positively associated with tourists’ PRI and tourists’ PRI can foster TCB. Additionally, findings support the partial mediating role of service quality perception between TGAH and tourists’ PRI and that of tourist trust between tourists’ PRI and TCB. These findings theoretically advance the PRI literature by enriching its drivers from a novel insight into the humor usage of tour guides and extending its outcomes to the extra-role actions of tourists. Practical implications can help tour guides to enhance tourists’ PRI and TCB.

KEYWORDS:

• Perceived relationship investment
• humor
• service quality perception
• tourist citizenship behavior
• trust
• tour guide

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Scientific Research Start-Up Project for Talent Introduction in Qingdao University.