Eliciting positive emotion through strategic responses to COVID-19 crisis: Evidence from the tourism sector

Abstract

While social media are effective means of communicating with adverse customer emotions during a crisis, it remains unclear how tourism organisations can respond to pandemic crisis on social media to prevent negative aftermaths. Using a set-theoretical approach, we investigate how COVID-19 response strategies and linguistic cues of responses are intertwined to evoke positive emotions among consumers. This study entails a qualitative content analysis of tourism organisations' COVID-19 announcements and a social media analytics approach that captures consumers’ emotional reactions to these announcements via their Twitter replies. Our results extend some well-established findings in the tourism crisis literature by suggesting that combining innovative response strategy, argument quality, and assertive language can reinforce positive emotions during the COVID-19 crisis. Taking organisational characteristics into consideration, we suggest that young established hotels utilize innovative response strategies, whereas retrenchment response strategies for all types of restaurants should be avoided during the COVID-19 crisis.

Extension of Goal-Directed Behavior Model for Post-Pandemic Korean Travel Intentions to Alternative Local Destinations: Perceived Risk and Knowledge

“…Thus, from a practical perspective, it is recommended that DMOs design content that can first elicit positive feelings and sentiment of target readers and travelers in anticipation of a trip. Under a novel study of Li et al [95], investigating hospitality and tourism firms' digital announcements in times of crises, a combination of innovative responses (e.g., innovative approach to bolster hygiene standards), argument quality (e.g., strong arguments of the firm with regards to its capability of combating the virus infection), and assertive language (e.g., confident and bold messages from the firm) was found to suppress negative tourist emotions and strengthen positive ones. Moreover, advanced technology such as virtual reality (VR), allowing users to experience and interact with the local tourism destinations in three dimensions and at the most authentic level, should be fully taken advantage of in post-pandemic times to induce consumer's positive emotions and desire to visit them in real life [96,97].…”

Recommend or not? The influence of emotions on passengers’ intention of airline recommendation during COVID-19

“… Brunner-Sperdin et al (2012) suggested that various service settings such as service environment, social surrounding, and leisure experiences make differences on customer's emotional states during their traveling experience. More specifically, positive emotion normally plays a vital role in building attachment of the tourism destination contributing to improve business reputation, and achieving positive customer behavioral intention ( Kastenholz et al, 2020 ; Li et al, 2022 ); while negative emotion felt by a customer is often deemed as having a stronger cognitive and behavioral intention than positive emotion, which causes unfavorable outcomes such as complaints or switching behavior ( Nawijn & Biran, 2019 ).…”

The influence of firm’s feedbacks on user-generated content’s linguistic style matching–An explanation based on communication accommodation theory

“…The emotional polarity of users' posted content is often an indicator of their attitude toward a specific consumption experience and the willingness to continuously participate in the VBC (Jang and Moutinho, 2019), which results in a change in their communication conformity strategy. If a user's existing posts are overall positive, the user is more willing to create a like-minded relationship with the VBC, i.e., understanding, adapting, and imitating the firm's behaviors (Li et al, 2022). Accordingly, the influence of firms' feedbacks frequency on the user's imitation and convergence to the firm's linguistic style may be accelerated.…”