Stop unsafe behaviors: Matching strategies of social norms and anthropomorphized roles in tourism safety communication

Unsafe visitor behaviors jeopardize their safety and destination sustainability, urging effective tourism safety communication to foster compliance. Utilizing construal level theory (CLT) and elaboration likelihood model (ELM), this study investigated how social norms (descriptive vs. injunctive) and anthropomorphized roles (friend vs. mentor) jointly shape visitors’ safety compliance behavior. The results of 2 experimental studies revealed that injunctive norms aligned with the mentor role enhance safety compliance behavior through the mediating effect of perceived threat, whereas descriptive norms coupled with the friend role guide safety compliance behavior via psychological closeness. From a matching perspective, our research enhances the understanding of tourism safety communication strategies and their impacts, thereby inspiring the combined application of CLT and ELM and providing insights into effective tourism safety management.