In December 2019, a novel laboratory-confirmed coronavirus (2019-nCoV) infection, which has caused clusters of severe illnesses, was first reported in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, China. This foodborne illness, which reportedly most likely originated in a seafood market where wild animals are sold illegally, has transmitted among humans through close contact, across the world. The aim of this study is to explore health/risk perceptions of and attitudes toward healthy/risky food in the immediate context of food crisis. More specifically, by using the data collected from 1008 respondents in January 2020, the time when China was hit hard by the “Corona Virus Disease 2019” (COVID-19), this study investigates the overall and different generational respondents’ health/risk perceptions of and attitudes toward organic food and game meat. The results reveal that, firstly, based on their food health and risk perceptions of healthy and risky food, the respondents’ general attitudes are positive toward organic food but relatively negative toward game meat. Secondly, older generations have a more positive attitude and are more committed to organic food. Younger generations’ attitude toward game meat is more negative whereas older generations attach more importance to it because of its nutritional and medicinal values. In addition, this research also indicates that the COVID-19 crisis influences the respondents’ perceptions of and attitudes toward organic food and game meat consumption. However, the likelihood of its impact on older generations’ future change in diets is smaller, which implies that older generations’ food beliefs are more stable.

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This study examines the influence of hotels' green practices, recent amenities, and traditionally salient attributes on customers' overall online evaluation, revisit intention and hotel performance. The researchers acquired data from more than one hundred US hotels located across different states with the assistance of an international hotel chain. In order to demonstrate the incremental information content of recently-adopted hotel amenities and levels of green initiatives, the study compared two extended models with the basic model, which incorporates only salient attributes such as cleanliness, location, room, service and value. MethodsResearchers conducted focus-group interviews through video and telephone conferences with a total of eight managers. We controlled work experience and age in order to select the proper focus group members. They represented different functional departments: rooms, marketing, food and beverage, human resources, and engineering. ResultsThe findings indicate that the availability of recently-added amenities such as free Wi-Fi, pet boarding, free self-parking, multilingual staff, and airport transportation, as well as green practice initiatives, have a strong, incremental predictive power in explaining guests' overall online review ratings, price premium and revisit intention. ConclusionThis study confirmed the incremental predictive power of recent emerging attributes and green practices on guests' overall attitudes and their willingness to pay a price premium. Thus, traditional salient hotel attributes, for example, service, location, value for money, and room cannot fully meet guests' demanding expectations. This study's results corroborate the findings of Ottenbacher and Gnoth (2005) that hotels relying on the investment in these basic tangible or intangible facilities or services will not be any more successful.

With more and more destinations relying on repeat travelers, the inclination of tourists to revisit some destinations has become a significant topic of study. Therefore, the reasons for travelers’ revisits have been addressed in many research studies. These studies have determined several factors of the revisit inclination, such as satisfaction, destination image, and perceived quality. However, in most of the previous studies about the relationships among the destination image and tourists’ satisfaction, as well as their behavioral intentions to the destination, the moderating variables were not considered. Consequently, we analyzed the moderator effects of certain characteristics of different travel arrangements on the theoretical relationship among the destination image, tourists’ satisfaction, and their behavioral intentions to the destination. This article first identifies the similarities and differences among these two types of Chinese outbound travelers in terms of their demographic and trip characteristics. It then confirms that these two types of travelers differ in terms of the relationships among perceived destination images, satisfaction level, and future behavioral intentions using an invariance test of structural model. According to the multiple group cause-and-effect analysis, the results show that travel arrangement can largely affect either the relations between destination image and tourists’ satisfaction or their behavioral intentions. Moreover, the relationship between either destination image and tourists’ satisfaction or their behavioral intentions is generally stronger for independent visitors. Finally, the influences are discussed from both theoretical and practical perspective.

Social media sites serve as lead generators for achieving marketing communication and raising brand awareness for casual-dining restaurant firms. This study attempts to measure social media engagement across different social networking sites (SNSs) and promotional activities for the casual-dining restaurant industry. This study also explores the influence of the dimensionality of social media engagement on the performance of casual-dining restaurants. The findings show that the metrics of social media engagement are different across channels and promotional activities. The results also reveal that these metrics have significant positive impacts on casual-dining restaurant performance. Pragmatically, the findings provide an assessment that enables casual-dining restaurant marketers to select the most effective SNSs and implement the most appropriate promotional activities, given the limited marketing budget of small and medium-sized casual-dining restaurants.

Globally, there is a growing concern about health threats from water pollution and its effects upon products used in the restaurant food preparation process. Thus, the use of contaminated water for commercial food preparation represents a high source of risk for disease-causing illnesses upon human health in both developed and developing countries. Using the Protection Motivation Theory, a convenience sampling of n = 506 Chinese residents and visitors, defined as non-Chinese residents born and socialized in cultures outside of China, who dined in restaurants within a major Chinese metropolitan area, were used to determine how guests responded to perceived threats of consuming contaminated food products used for menu items tainted by impure tap water during the food and beverage preparation process. Perceived water quality concerns were found to manifest a fear appeal that initiated two protection motivation dimensions representing threat appraisal (severity and vulnerability) and coping appraisal (response-efficacy and self-efficacy), with severity and self-efficacy receiving the highest perceptual concerns. Results documented that when restaurant guests perceived a high level of self-efficacy, they were more likely to dine out regardless of perceived risks about unsafe restaurant water quality issues. All relationships involving threat and coping appraisal, and risk-reduction behavior toward dining out were significantly different between restaurant guests representing Chinese residents and non-Chinese residents. Findings revealed that threat appraisal upon risk-reduction behavior toward dining out were positively stronger for non-Chinese residents.

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