Internalizing Social Norms to Promote Pro-environmental Behavior: Chinese Tourists on Social Media

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, Chinese tourists frequently use social media to acquire information, purchase tourism products, and share their travel-related ideas. User-generated content on social media may have a profound impact on Chinese tourists’ values, normative thoughts, and behavior. Although previous studies suggest that social normative messaging could facilitate cognitive and social learning by exerting social pressure concerning pro-environmental behavior, few studies have explored how to achieve this. This study explores how to use social media content to internalize pro-environmental social norms through a mixed-methods research, including a survey with 523 Chinese tourists and 30 in-depth interviews. The findings show that social norms have a positive relationship with both introjected norms and integrated norms. Both introjected norms and integrated norms are significant predictors of pro-environmental behavior. Social media can trigger cognitive and emotional reactions, which help internalize social normative information into moral obligation. In addition, social media is effective in internalizing social norms into personal norms only when the behavior is easy to achieve and does not require much financial cost. The research results contribute to social media marketing and sustainable tourism practices. The findings are also critical for understanding Chinese tourists, a significant emerging tourism market.

摘要

近年来,中国旅游者频繁地用网络社交媒体获取信息, 购买旅游产品, 并且分享旅游经历。用户生产内容已经对中国旅游者的价值观, 规范和行为产生了深刻的影响。尽管之前的文献表明, 社会规范可以通过促进社会学习来施加社会压力, 从而促进环保行为, 但是几乎没有文献探讨这个过程如何实现。本文使用混合研究方法探究了如何利用社交媒体信息来使社会规范内在化。样本由523份问卷和30个深度访谈构成。研究表明, 社会规范对能够有效影响环保行为的两种规范(融合规范和内生规范)都有积极的影响。通过唤起认知和情感反应, 社交媒体能够有效地使社会规范内在化。在环保行为相对容易实施并且不需要花费很多金钱的时候, 社会规范的这种作用尤为明显。本文的结论可以为社交媒体市场营销和可持续旅游实践提供建议, 也能使我们更好地理解中国这个快速增长的重要市场。

KEYWORDS:

• pro-environmental behavior
• social media engagement
• norms
• internalization
• emotion
• social roles

关键词:

• 亲环境行为
• 社交媒体参与
• 规范
• 内化
• 情感
• 社会角色

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the [Hainan Provincial National Science Foundation] under Grant [number 721QN224]; and [Hainan University] under Grant [number kyqd(sk)1924].

Notes on contributors

Wei Han

Wei Han, Ph.D., is lecturer in the School of Tourism, Hainan University. Her research interests include user-generated content and influencer marketing (E-mail: 291,254,[email protected]).

Yi Wang

Yi Wang, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in Nottingham University Business School China, University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Her research focuses on tourism policy-making, cultural tourism interpretation, and sustainable tourism planning (E-mail: [email protected]).

Shan Zhang

Shan Zhang is Associate professor in the School of Tourism, Hainan University. Her research interests include big data analytics in tourism and hospitality and E-Marketing (E-mail: [email protected]).

Yangyang Jiang

Yangyang Jiang, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in Nottingham University Business School China, University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Her research interests lie in customer experience management, consumer behavior, services marketing, and sustainable development (E-mail: [email protected]).