The influence of visitors’ self-protective behaviors on social carrying capacity in museums during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

The public health restrictions put into place to control the COVID-19 pandemic have greatly affected cultural and tourism institutions. Based on normative theory, this study aims to enhance the theoretical understanding of social carrying capacity by analyzing the impact of visitors’ self-protective behaviors and tourism risk perception. A visual method experiment was conducted in museum settings, which are typical indoor cultural and tourism institutions. Results show that the social carrying capacity is significantly influenced by social distancing and mask wearing. Specifically, the visitors’ crowding norm is 0.5 m∼1 m when wearing a mask and 1 m∼1.2 m when not wearing a mask. In addition, tourism risk perception has double effects on the crowding norm; ‘self pressure’ has a positive impact, and ‘group pressure’ has a negative impact. These findings can help museums manage crowding issues as COVID-19 continues to have an impact on the world.

KEYWORDS:

• Social carrying capacity
• social distancing
• wearing masks
• tourism risk perception
• museums
• scenario experiment

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Chengdu Science and Technology Bureau [grant numbers 2020-RK00-00361-ZF]; “From 0 to 1” Innovation Research Project of Sichuan University, China [grant numbers 2021CXC15]; and the National Social Science Fund of China [grant numbers 21FGLB088].

Notes on contributors

Chenyue Zhao

Chenyue Zhao was a master's student of Tourism School at Sichuan University. And she is now a Ph.D. candidate of Tourism School at Sun Yat-sen University. Her research interests are tourists' psychology and behavior.

Li Cheng

Li Cheng is a Professor of Tourism School at Sichuan University. He is the Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, a committee member of Tourism Geography Committee of the Geographical Society of China (GSC). His research interests cover sustainable tourism, tourism anthropology and heritage tourism.