ABSTRACT
Social distancing is an effective way to reduce infection risk during pandemics, such as COVID-19. It is important for the tourism industry to understand the effect of social distancing on tourist behavior to better adapt to this emerging environment. This study investigates the role of social distancing in tourists' preferences for anthropomorphism. Based on three experimental studies, this study found that tourists tend to prefer anthropomorphism more under conditions of social distancing (vs. nonsocial distancing). This effect was induced by the higher perceived warmth of anthropomorphism when one had to practice social distancing. Such effects are only significant among tourists with higher levels of interdependent self-construal. This study makes significant theoretical contributions and provides important practical implications for tourism marketing and service design during pandemic and epidemic crises.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: Drawing on Schumpeter's theory of innovation and stereotype content model, this study aims to arrive at an integrated model that relates destination innovation type, destination innovativeness and revisit intention to uncover more about the drivers and outcomes of destination innovativeness from a consumer-centric perspective. Design/methodology/approach: Three studies, including content analysis of news media, an onsite survey and an online survey in Chinese special featured towns, were conducted. Findings: This study develops a consumer-centric destination innovation measure. The results reveal that input innovation and product innovation positively influence revisit intention through the serial mediation of destination innovativeness and perceived competence. Research limitations/implications: As the data was collected from tourists in China, any generalization of the results to other regions should be made with caution;accordingly, replication is needed to test the proposed model in different cultural contexts. Second, during the onsite data collection period, special featured town destinations were still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have affected the perceptions of tourists. Third, the second round of data was collected using an online survey, which may have introduced bias due to a potential lack of representativeness. Fourth, some potential missing variables could also influence the links among innovation, destination innovativeness and revisit intention. Originality/value: This study presents the first empirical test of the impact of innovation type and innovativeness on tourists' response to tourism destinations. The results of this study could guide destinations to deliver more effective consumer-centric innovations to generate competitiveness. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABSTRACT
Purpose Drawing on Schumpeter's theory of innovation and stereotype content model, this study aims to arrive at an integrated model that relates destination innovation type, destination innovativeness and revisit intention to uncover more about the drivers and outcomes of destination innovativeness from a consumer-centric perspective. Design/methodology/approach Three studies, including content analysis of news media, an onsite survey and an online survey in Chinese special featured towns, were conducted. Findings This study develops a consumer-centric destination innovation measure. The results reveal that input innovation and product innovation positively influence revisit intention through the serial mediation of destination innovativeness and perceived competence. Research limitations/implications As the data was collected from tourists in China, any generalization of the results to other regions should be made with caution;accordingly, replication is needed to test the proposed model in different cultural contexts. Second, during the onsite data collection period, special featured town destinations were still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have affected the perceptions of tourists. Third, the second round of data was collected using an online survey, which may have introduced bias due to a potential lack of representativeness. Fourth, some potential missing variables could also influence the links among innovation, destination innovativeness and revisit intention. Originality/value This study presents the first empirical test of the impact of innovation type and innovativeness on tourists' response to tourism destinations. The results of this study could guide destinations to deliver more effective consumer-centric innovations to generate competitiveness.