The effect of COVID-19 on tourists’ intention to resume hotel consumption: The role of resilience

This study aims to better understand how one particular personal capacity—psychological resilience—may help consumers adapt to the ‘new normal’ provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic in the hotel context, which is characterized by high uncertainty. We conducted a quantitative empirical study among consumers of hotel services, which showed that their psychological resilience has a negative effect on their perceived health risk and emotional risk. This negative effect on risk helps increase tourist intention to return to consuming hotel services despite the on-going pandemic. The findings are of value to the literature and the professional sector alike, as they demonstrate both relationships jointly for the first time. The work can help hotel firms to design more effective strategies for approaching customers in the ‘new normal’.     

当“灰犀牛”遇到“黑天鹅”——网民对邮轮旅游负面事件的风险感知变化

邮轮旅游因其内在脆弱属性,一直受到各类负面事件的影响。2020年初“钻石公主号”邮轮的新冠疫情跨境蔓延引起全球网络关注,极大地影响了公众对邮轮旅游的风险感知及消费决策。本文以知乎网站评论为数据来源,将疫情发生和全球邮轮停运为时间节点,把邮轮负面事件划分为3个阶段,运用词频分析、语义网络分析、情感分析结合空间分析等方法,探究中国网民的风险感知变化。研究发现: “灰犀牛阶段”,邮轮正常运营,网民风险感知聚焦于自然灾害和救援开展;新冠疫情初发时的“灰犀牛遇到黑天鹅阶段”,邮轮逐渐停航,网民风险感知聚焦于邮轮公共卫生安全;疫情全面爆发后的“黑天鹅阶段”,邮轮全面停航,网民风险感知包括自然灾害、火灾、疫情等多个方面,感知内容趋向分散。同时,网民的风险感知空间分布存在差异,沿海地区网民对邮轮负面事件多以正面和微弱负面情绪为主;但内陆地区网民因对邮轮旅游了解程度相对较低,其感知负面居多。当前,新冠疫情仍在全球蔓延,研究内容可为邮轮旅游的疫后市场恢复和可持续发展提供参考。     

Risk,uncertainty and the theory of planned behavior: A tourism example

The differential impacts risk and uncertainty have on travel decision-making were explored by examining the constructs' influence on the antecedents of intentions to visit Australia using the theory of planned behavior. Respondents were obtained from online consumer panels in South Korea, China and Japan. The South Korean and Chinese samples were general population samples, while the sample from Japan was an international travelers' sample. The extended model fitted the data well, explaining between 21 and 44 percent of the variance in intentions. Subjective norms and perceived behavioral control significantly impacted on intentions in all country samples, whereas attitudes toward visiting Australia were only significant in Japan. Subjective norms influenced attitudes and perceived behavioral control in all country samples. Finally, perceived risk influenced attitudes toward visiting Australia in South Korea and Japan, while perceived uncertainty influenced attitudes toward visiting Australia in South Korea and China and perceived behavioral control in China and Japan.     

Organizational trust in times of COVID-19: Hospitality employees’ affective responses to managers’ communication

During a crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, what managers communicate to their employees can greatly impact important organizational attitudes, such as organizational trust. There is, however, very little research focusing on the mechanisms explaining how managers’ messages during a crisis can influence employees’ organizational trust. To address this gap, the current study examined the role that emotions play in developing organizational trust using a 2 (following CDC norms vs. ignoring CDC norms) by 2 (employee focus vs. bottom-line focus) between-subjects factorial experiment, with COVID-19 as the context. The results showed that a manager’s communication that followed the CDC social norms made employees feel grateful, whereas communication that ignored CDC social norms enhanced fear and anger toward the organization. The feelings of gratefulness and fear influenced organizational trust. These results provide important theoretical and practical implications for understanding organizational trust during a crisis.     

How do authenticity and quality perceptions affect dining experiences and recommendations of food trucks? The moderating role of perceived risk

A growing number of food trucks differentiate themselves in the competitive market by serving ethnic foods. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of customers’ authenticity and quality perceptions of ethnic food trucks on their memorable dining experience (MDE) and, consequently, word of mouth (WOM) while considering customers’ perceived risk. Data were collected from 540 customers who had dined at ethnic food trucks in the U.S. Structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression were employed to test the proposed hypotheses. The results indicated that authenticity perceptions influence quality perceptions and dining satisfaction directly, and MDE indirectly through dining satisfaction. Moreover, dining satisfaction affects WOM directly as well as indirectly through MDE. Among the three dimensions of perceived risk, hygienic risk mitigates both of the relationships between authenticity perceptions and dining satisfaction as well as between quality perceptions and dining satisfaction. Implications and suggestions for future research were discussed.     

The effect of online restaurant menus on consumers’ purchase intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic

As COVID-19 escalated globally in 2020, mandated suspension of dine-in services was instilled to control virus transmission. Restaurants lost billions of dollars, millions experienced severe employment changes, and numerous small restaurants closed. For those remaining in business, converting to online food ordering was essential. Unique to the food ordering setting, this study extended the Stimulus-Organism-Response model to predict the purchase intentions of participants in an online food ordering context. Using structural equation modeling, this study discovered the indirect effects of the menu’s visual appeal and informativeness, and the perception of COVID-19 risks on consumer purchase intentions. This causal relationship was significantly mediated by consumers’ desire for food and their perceived convenience of online food ordering. Through providing theoretical and managerial implications for how to identify appropriate products, utilize content marketing effectively, and attract new customers, this study could assist restaurants in adapting to remaining competitive, even post COVID-19.     

Restaurant diners’ self-protective behavior in response to an epidemic crisis

This study is designed to conceptually propose and empirically examine a theoretical model for restaurant diners’ self-protective behavior in response to an epidemic crisis. Based on Weinstein's five-stage PAPM, a prospective model and a classification scheme for five corresponding types of self-protective behavior adopters are proposed in this study. By using ten-year longitudinal survey data provided by a timely research sample which was obtained from a multi-store restaurant's diner club members immediately after the peak period of the SARS outbreak in Taiwan, both theoretical and managerial applicability of the proposed stage-based model are empirically verified in this study. The results show that the type of self-protective behavior respondents adopted is significantly associated with their marital status and risk attitude toward the epidemic. Besides, respondents significantly advance their type of self-protective behavior adoption along successive epidemics from the SARS to avian influenza A(H7N9) in decade.     

Risk Perception and Buying Behavior: An Examination of Some Relationships in the Context of Cruise Tourism in Jamaica

Cruise tourism continues to grow substantially, even as many other forms of travel stagnate. In this era of increasing worldwide violence against tourists, safety, security, and risk abatement are becoming principal components in travelers' decision-making processes. This work examines the issue of perceived risk and safety and what impact these perceptions have on shopping behavior. The research takes place in Jamaica, a country with a reputation for aggressive vendors. Findings indicate that those visitors who traveled with others spent more time shopping and purchased more. Additionally, it was found that first time visitors express higher levels of discomfort with their surroundings than did repeat visitors, thus inhibiting purchase behavior. Finally, it was found that levels of perceived risk and security did have an impact on a traveler's intention to return to Jamaica.     

Is digital technology the magic bullet for performing work at home? Lessons learned for post COVID-19 recovery in hospitality management

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly brought about a number of disruptions to when and where work is undertaken for hospitality employees. The rapid spread of COVID-19 forced many hospitality managers to use digital technologies to perform work from home, termed digital work connectivity. Yet little is known about how hospitality employees cope with it. The purpose of this study is to investigate an important yet underspecified issue as to how digital work connectivity can be detrimental for employees’ work behavior.Design/methodology/approachWe test our hypotheses using multi-wave and multi-source data collected from 467 middle managerial-level hospitality employees in China.FindingsThe findings show that digital work connectivity can lead to self-control depletion, which in turn is associated with disengagement from work. Further, the findings show that relational energy is an important resource that can buffer the detrimental effects of digital work connectivity on hospitality employees.Practical implicationsThe association of digital work connectivity with employee withdrawal behavior highlights the urgent need for hospitality enterprises to have clear guidelines that regulate technology use at home for work purposes.Social implicationsOur research shows that the absence of clear guidelines in relation to the use of digital technology for work at home risks producing unintended consequences for both hospitality employees and their enterprises.Originality/valueOur research draws from recent advances in resource allocation theories of self-control and adopts a more nuanced approach to uncover a counterintuitive reality that while people use digital technology to remain connected with work, doing so can actually contribute to their withdrawal behavior.     

A comparative study of eight COVID-19 protective measures and their impact on Swiss tourists’ travel intentions

A comparative vignette-based experimental survey design incorporating various socio-psychological factors, linked to the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the Health Belief Model (HBM) and the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking scale (DOSPERT) was carried out to test variations in eight travel-related COVID-19 protective measures on Swiss tourists’ travel intentions. Among the tested measures, vaccination passports, surgical masks and quarantining are those that stand out the most, with surgical masks having the greatest acceptance and willingness to adopt while traveling. Quarantining, on the other hand, appears to have a deterrent influence on travel intentions, and vaccination passports have the lowest perceived barriers during travel, but the highest perceived benefits in mitigating the spread of the infection. The discussion of individual differences has specific implications for tourism management against the background of our empirical findings.