When Do Tourists Defend Tourism Service Providers’ Reputations? Insights from Attribution Theory

ABSTRACT

Tourism resort events allow mass tourists to intervene to establish resort reputations among other destinations. From the locus of attribution theory perspective, this paper is the first to explore tourists defending behavior toward resorts’ reputations through destination social responsibility and information adequacy lenses. Through questioning 240 tourists in the Red Sea resorts, the study found that defending is a post-attribution behavior. The study found that tourists who internally (vs. externally) attribute the event outcomes tend (vs. ignore) to defend the Red Sea resorts’ reputation. Nevertheless, resorts’ reputation could maintain defending behavior in case of external attribution with the presence of their perception of resorts’ social responsibility and information adequacy. Such defending behavior approach enables crucial managerial implications for the Red Sea resort managers.

KEYWORDS:

• Corporate social responsibility
• defending behavior
• attribution theory
• tourist attribution
• locus of causality
• tourism information

Acknowledgments

The researcher would like to thank Prof. Karina A. Bogatyreva, Strategic and International Management Department, Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship, GSOM, for her supportive, most generous, and thoughtful efforts to help the researcher in his studies. Also, the researcher is funded by a full Ph.D. scholarship under the joint executive program between the Arab Republic of Egypt (Represented at Helwan University)and Saint Petersburg State University.

Disclosure Statement

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