Festival travellers’ pro-social and protective behaviours against COVID-19 in the time of pandemic

ABSTRACT

With the uncertain pandemic situation on a global scale, pro-social and sustainable tourism performance has been continuously valued and called for. Undoubtedly, the sustainable festival tourism tactics and formation of festival tourists’ personal norms and pro-social intentions urgently need to be investigated. This study has verified the intricate relations where problem awareness of COVID-19, ascription of responsibility, positive and negative anticipated feelings, descriptive and injunctive social norms and a sense of obligation to take pro-social behaviours efficiently affect travellers’ pro-social intentions for mask-wearing, social-distancing and sanitation activities. Moreover, psychological risk perception of COVD-19 and gender as the significant moderators ably broadened the proposed theoretic framework. This research not only enriched the current COVID-19 tourism literature and contributed valuable research direction of pro-social festival tourism from the theoretical perspective, but also provided practical suggestions for promoting the sustainable and pro-social tourism performance.

KEYWORDS:

• problem awareness of COVID-19
• ascription of responsibility
• anticipated emotions
• social norms
• pro-social intentions
• festival travellers

Disclosure statement

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