Mocking oneself or teasing others? The interactive effects of humorous message framing and tourism crisis response strategies

ABSTRACT

Numerous studies have investigated tourism crisis communication, but few studies have focused on matching crisis communication message framing with crisis response strategy. Therefore, we explored the interactive effects of humorous message framing (HMF) and crisis response strategy (CRS) on destination reputation. The results indicate that adopting an apology CRS alongside self-deprecating HMF improves destination reputation, while the combination of a denial CRS with aggressive HMF helps restore destination reputation. Moreover, perceived sincerity and destination trust are effective mediators. This paper reveals the logic behind the application of destination CRS and deepens academics’ comprehension of the effect of HMF. It expands the research system of tourism crisis communication from the viewpoint of message framing. Meanwhile, the results provide theoretical and practical references for destination crisis response and reputation recovery.

KEYWORDS:

• Humorous message framing
• crisis response strategy
• destination reputation
• perceived sincerity
• destination trust

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No.: 42201237].