Engendering prosociality through tourist-to-tourist interaction in religious tourism: an existential transformative perspective

AbstractThe religious prosociality hypothesis explains why visitors with religious beliefs tend to be more prosocial. Interestingly, in the context of religious tourism, non-believers who travel to religious tourist destinations often experience a prosocial turn similar to believers, but the mechanism behind it remains unclear. Drawing on an existential transformative perspective, this study uses tourist-to-tourist interaction (TTI), prosociality, interpersonal authenticity, and emotional solidarity to investigate the transformative power of religious tourism experiences in making one more prosocial. Questionnaires were distributed in a famous religious tourist attraction in China’s Yunnan Province. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS24.0 and Amos24.0. Research findings include: TTI positively influences interpersonal authenticity and emotional solidarity; interpersonal authenticity and emotional solidarity positively affect prosociality significantly; interpersonal authenticity and emotional solidarity mediate the relationship between TTI and prosociality. This study analyses the mechanism of prosociality aroused by TTI in religious tourism and fills the research gap on how religious tourism affects the relationship between individuals and society. It also provides practical implications for relevant destinations to facilitate TTI to maximize the positive social impacts of religious tourism activities.Keywords: Religious tourismprosocialitytourist-to-tourist interactioninterpersonal authenticityemotional solidarity Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Additional informationFundingThe research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [No: 42001146].Notes on contributorsTing JiangTing Jiang is a lecturer at Shenzhen Tourism College, Jinan University, China. She received her Ph.D. in tourism management from Sun Yat-sen University, China. Her research interests include religious tourism, heritage tourism, and tourism destination management.Jun GaoJun Gao is currently an associate professor at School of Tourism Management, Sun Yat-sen University. He got his Ph.D. degree from the University of Waikato, New Zealand in 2018. His research interest lies in border tourism, heritage tourism, and sustainable tourism development. He has published in international journals such as Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, and Journal of Sustainable Tourism.Xiaojie ZhengYue’e Liao is a master student at School of Tourism, Xinjiang University, with research interests in border tourism and ethnic tourism.Yue’e LiaoXiaojie Zheng is an undergraduate student at School of Management, Jinan University, China. His research interest lies in religious tourism.