Responses to Compatriot Tourist Misbehavior: The Importance of Social Identity, Emotions, and Misbehavior Type

Abstract

As destinations recover quickly from the COVID-19 pandemic, the tension caused by tourist misbehavior is coming back to poison the sustainability of tourism development. Guided by the social identity theory, this paper examines how people respond to compatriot tourist misbehavior. It contributes to the literature by studying the psychological mechanism underlying individuals’ calibration of misbehaviors committed by compatriot tourists and predicting downstream intergroup and intragroup consequences of tourist misbehavior. The results of two experiments showed that people displayed ingroup favoritism and intragroup differentiation simultaneously in their responses to compatriot tourists’ misbehavior. Ingroup identification motivated people to exculpate the misbehaving compatriots and carry out prosocial behavior direct at the destination involved, suggesting a double-edged sword. Emotions played mediating roles underlying people’s attitudes and behavioral intentions toward compatriot tourists’ misbehavior. The results also implied the moderating role of misbehavior type. Practically, this paper informs destinations on communication strategies for tourist misbehavior.