Breaking bad: how anticipated emotions and perceived severity shape tourist civility?

Abstract

How to alleviate tourist incivility (i.e. social and environmental deviant behaviors) is not only a practical concern but an emerging tourism research topic. Advocating civilized tourist behavior could be an effective tool in enhancing sustainable tourism. In this paper, we test how tourists’ anticipated emotions and perceived severity (of tourism incivility problems) shape tourist civility via an extended norm activation model (NAM). A total of 401 valid questionnaires were obtained from tourists of a national wetland park in China. The results indicated that: 1) both positive and negative anticipated emotions not only have a direct impact on tourist civility but also have an indirect impact via personal norms, 2) positive anticipated emotions (as compared to negative ones) play a more vital role in the tourist civility formation, and 3) perceived severity of tourism incivility problems negatively moderates the links of personal norms and negative anticipated emotions to tourist civility. This paper provides theoretical and practical implications to better understand the role of anticipated emotions and perceived severity in tourist civility decision-making.

Keywords:

• Tourist civility
• norm activation model
• anticipated emotions
• perceived severity
• broken windows theory

Acknowledgement

This research is supported by the Youth Foundation of Humanities and Social Science Project of the Ministry of Education in China (No. 19YJC630131). Acknowledgement is also extended to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and critical comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by Youth Foundation of Humanities and Social Science Project of the Ministry of Education in China.

Notes on contributors

Hongliang Qiu

Hongliang Qiu, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Vice Dean of the School of Business Administration, Tourism College of Zhejiang, China. He was selected as “Zhejiang Young Tourism Expert”, a tourism top talent cultivation project in 2019. His article not only won top 4 cited articles of Tourism Tribune (2014-2022), but ranked first for excellent papers of 2014 China Tourism Academy Summit Dissertation Award. According to CNKI statistical results, he is also the scholar with the most single citations and total citations in the field of tourist environmentally responsible behavior and tourist civility.

Xiongzhi Wang

Xiongzhi Wang is a PhD candidate at School of Communication and Arts, the University of Queensland, Australia. He is interested in environmental psychology, sustainable tourism, and environmental communication research.

Wei Wei

Wei Wei, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Rosen College of Hospitality Management, University of Central Florida, U.S.A. She received her PhD degree and Master’s degree in Hospitality and Tourism Management from Purdue University, U.S.A. Her research interests include consumer behavior, psychology, and experience in hospitality and tourism.

Alastair M. Morrison

Alastair M. Morrison, PhD, is a Research Professor in the Department of Marketing, Events and Tourism, Greenwich Business School at the University of Greenwich in London, UK. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Purdue University, USA in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. He has published approximately 300 academic articles and conference proceedings, as well as over 50 research monographs related to marketing and tourism. He is the author of six books on tourism marketing and development. His research interests include tourism destination management, marketing and branding, sustainable tourism, tourism cities, sharing economy and crisis management.

Mao-Ying Wu

Mao-Ying Wu, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Tourism, at School of Management, Zhejiang University, China. She gained her PhD degree at James Cook University, Australia. She is interested in the sustainable tourism entrepreneurship, tourism community relationship, and rural development.