Protecting yourself and others: festival tourists’ pro-social intentions for wearing a mask, maintaining social distancing, and practicing sanitary/hygiene actions

Abstract

This study investigated the formation of travelers’ pro-social intentions of wearing a mask, maintaining social distancing, and practicing sanitary/hygiene actions in the festival tourism context by merging the extended norm activation model (NAM) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB). The developed theoretical framework was further deepened by evaluating the moderating role of tourists’ perceptions about COVID-19. A sample of 413 Chinese travelers with domestic festival experience before or during the pandemic was used for data analysis. The outcomes revealed that all the hypotheses were statistically supported, and the sufficiency of the proposed model, integrating the NAM and the TPB to predict festival travelers’ pro-social behavioral intentions, was verified. Furthermore, travelers’ perceptions about COVID-19 had a significant moderating effect on four associations: between problem awareness of COVID-19 and ascribed responsibility; ascribed responsibility and anticipated sense of guilt; problem awareness of COVID-19 and attitudes toward pro-social behaviors; and subjective norms and intentions for pro-social behaviors.

Keywords:

• Festival tourism
• norm-activation model
• theory of planned behavior
• perception about COVID-19
• pro-social intentions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xiaoting Chi

Xiaoting Chi is a Graduate Student in the College of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Sejong University, South Korea. Her research interests include rural tourism, slow tourism, and adventure tourism. She has published many papers in the area of hospitality and tourism marketing.

Heesup Han

Heesup Han is a Professor in the College of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Sejong University, South Korea. His research interests include sustainable tourism, airline, medical tourism, and hospitality marketing. His papers have been selected as the most downloaded and read articles in many top-tier hospitality and tourism journals. Heesup Han is a 2019 and 2020 highly cited researcher (HCR) of the world in social science (identified by the Web of Science Group).

Seongseop (Sam) Kim

Seongseop (Sam) Kim is a Professor in the School of Hotel & Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. His research interests are tourism destination management and event/convention tourism.