Encouraging tourist citizenship behavior through resource uniqueness and service quality: The mediating role of emotions

Abstract

Consumer citizenship behavior is widely considered to be vital to business success. However, the role of resource uniqueness and service quality in encouraging citizenship behavior in tourism settings has not been well understood. Grounded on a framework integrating the Stimulus-Organism-Response Model and Social Exchange Theory, this study examines whether tourism resource uniqueness and service quality affect tourists’ citizenship behaviors (i.e., word-of-mouth recommendations and providing feedback) through the mediating effect of tourist emotion (i.e., positive and negative emotions). A total of 321 samples collected from three types of scenic spots in China were analyzed using structural equation modeling and Bootstrapping procedures. Results suggest that both tourism resource uniqueness and service quality positively predict positive emotion and negatively influence negative emotion, which is further positively and negatively associated with word-of-mouth recommendation and providing feedback, respectively. Moreover, both positive emotion and negative emotion mediate the effects of tourism resource uniqueness and service quality on tourists’ citizenship behaviors. Findings provide evidence that both resource uniqueness and service quality are critical to understand tourists’ citizenship behavior, and offer important marketing implications for destinations to manage tourist emotional experiences.

Understanding tourist citizenship behavior at the destination level

“…Customer citizenship behavior (CCB) makes a huge contribution to firm performance, service quality, and effectiveness (Groth, 2005). Given the importance of CCB, scholars have recently applied this concept to the tourist sector (e.g., Al Halbusi et al, 2020;Liu & Tsaur, 2014;Liu et al, 2020;Shafiee et al, 2020;Tsaur et al, 2021).…”

“…They care for and become involved with the place they visit, recommending the destination, offering feedback to destination management organizations (DMOs), and helping other tourists. TCB can therefore be understood through the lens of social exchange theory (Liu et al, 2020) because, when tourists are satisfied with a destination, they feel somehow obliged (albeit voluntarily) to benefit this destination through trust and reciprocity (Cheng, Yen, & Chen, 2016). Despite the potential importance of TCB in the management of tourist destinations, only one study (Liu et al, 2020) has examined TCB in relation to tourist destinations.…”

“…TCB can therefore be understood through the lens of social exchange theory (Liu et al, 2020) because, when tourists are satisfied with a destination, they feel somehow obliged (albeit voluntarily) to benefit this destination through trust and reciprocity (Cheng, Yen, & Chen, 2016). Despite the potential importance of TCB in the management of tourist destinations, only one study (Liu et al, 2020) has examined TCB in relation to tourist destinations. The few studies that have examined TCB have done so from the point of view of the customer of a tourism company.…”

“…Furthermore, the antecedents and possible consequences of TCB that contribute to overall destination management performance have been underexplored. Therefore, more research in this area is needed (Liu et al, 2020).…”

“…The dimensions of TCB are recommendation, helping, and feedback, and the dimensions of willingness to sacrifice are monetary and emotional sacrifice and effort. Previous tourism studies have not considered the multidimensionality of TCB in empirical analysis (e.g., Liu et al, 2020;Shaffiee et al, 2020).…”