CUHK Business School Research Looks at How Tourism Destinations Can Reduce Visitor Misbehaviour

HONG KONG SAR – Media
OutReach – 25 March 2021 – It’s
been a bad year for tourism and a boom in the travel and hospitality sector
would no doubt be good for the economy. However, it could also be a nightmare
for people living and working amid the flux of transient tourists. It wasn’t
that long ago that we saw media reports of tourist misbehaviour from carving
names on ancient Egyptian bas reliefs to chasing
geishas down the streets in Kyoto. Around the world, countries are
looking for ways to curb bad behaviour from tourists. Iceland, for instance,
launched the Inspired
by Iceland pledge in June 2017 that urges tourists to travel
responsibly. Apart from implementing official rules, a recent research study
reveals that poor tourist behaviour could be reduced by simply making the
tourists feel closer to the locals.

 

To illustrate the magnitude of opportunity, international
tourist arrivals fell
by 72 percent in January to October over the same period in 2019,
translating into a loss of US$935 billion – more than 10 times the loss the
industry suffered during the 2009 global financial crisis. Hotels and the
tourism industry are hoping for “revenge travel” to take place, a
riff on the concept of “revenge spending” that describes shopping
starved consumers overcompensating by splurging when the pandemic is over. But
how can places that seek to cash in on the return of tourist dollars do so
while avoiding a return to the old days of bad tourist behaviour?

 

This is the subject of a paper titled Tourist
Misbehaviour: Psychological Closeness to Fellow Consumer and Informal Social Control.
The study is the first to examine the psychological closeness between locals
and tourists and how this “psychological distance” affects tourists’
intention to misbehave. It was conducted by Lisa
Wan, Associate Professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism
Management and Department of Marketing at The Chinese University of Hong Kong
(CUHK) Business School and her co-authors Prof. Michael Hui at University of
Macau and Yao Qiu at CUHK Business School.

 

Psychological closeness refers to one’s feelings of
attachment and connection towards other people. We tend to feel psychologically
closer to someone whom we perceive as “one of us”. People who belong
to the same social group are likely to follow the same set of social or
cultural norms because they care about the consequences of their behaviour due
to the need for approval and belongingness. In-group members are also likely to
impose informal social control on fellow members, such as showing angry looks
or sharing comments on those who violate the social norms to reinforce the
order of the group. However, the same social practice does not usually apply to
out-group members.

In the tourism context, Prof. Wan and her co-authors explain
that when people are travelling abroad, they feel less connected to locals than
they would at home. In other words, tourists feel psychologically distant from
locals. Since they do not perceive themselves as belong to the same “group”,
it is less likely for them to comply with local norms because they are less
concerned about the consequences of their behaviour and they do not expect
their actions to invoke informal social control from locals. Locals, on the
other hand, consider tourists as outsiders and therefore may not always voice
out their disapproval of tourist bad behaviour.

 

In addition, the more local residents suffer directly or
indirectly from the bad behaviour of the tourists, the higher the likelihood
they would impose informal social control on tourists who are violating the
social norms. This is emphasised when locals feel victimised or responsible for
protecting the interests of their community. For example, local residents in Sai
Kung – a district in Hong Kong, protested after getting upset at
the influx of tourists during the pandemic and the mounting garbage problem
left behind. The researchers predict that tourists would have a higher
intention to misbehave when they think their behaviours are less likely to
affect local residents.

 

“It is essential for cities and destination
organisations that rely heavily on tourism sector but suffer from the influx of
tourists to grasp the underlying reasons or even the motivations for tourists’
misbehaviour,” Prof. Wan says.

 

The
Importance of Psychological Distance

Prof. Wan and her co-authors conducted three experiments to
test their hypotheses. In the first study, the participants – recruited from a
local Hong Kong university, were asked to imagine themselves either as tourists
in Bangkok or as local residents in Hong Kong. They were asked if they would
eat on a public bus, something that is banned in many cities in the world
(including Hong Kong). The results show that those who imagined themselves as
tourists in Bangkok reported a higher intention of eating on the bus because
they feel less close to fellow passengers on the bus and consequently, they
perceive a significantly lower likelihood of disapproval from other passengers.

 

A second study was conducted to test whether the degree to
which local residents would suffer as a result of tourist misbehaviour could contribute
to how likely this said misbehaviour would occur. A total of 200 American
participants were asked to imagine themselves at a supermarket checkout before
catching a train. They were surveyed on whether they would misuse the express
checkout service (by having more items than the supermarket’s limit for the
lane) in order to catch the train, which they were about to be late for.

 

According to the results, the participants who imagined
themselves as tourists showed a higher intention to use the express checkout
lane when they thought their actions would not significantly affect other
customers at the supermarket. This shows that tourists would indeed consider
how deeply it would affect local residents before committing misbehaviour.

 

In the third experiment, the researchers examined the notion
of excitement and its relation to tourists’ misbehaviour. The researchers
theorised that excitement may lead to misjudgement on whether their behaviours
are disapproved by locals. Over 200 students and staff members from a Hong Kong
university were recruited for the study.

 

The participants were randomly told that they were tourists
in Tokyo, tourists in Bangkok or non-tourists. They were asked whether they
would occupy a priority seat on public transport. The results reveal that when
the participants believe their actions were less likely to affect other
passengers, those who imagined themselves as tourists in Bangkok were more
likely to misbehave than those who imagined themselves as tourists in Tokyo. In
addition, the participants who imagined themselves as tourists in Bangkok also
perceive a significantly lower likelihood of disapproval from fellow passengers
than they were tourists in Tokyo due to the difference in psychological
distance.

 

Prof. Wan explains that since Hong Kong is known to be the “most
Japanese City” outside Japan, it is understandable that Hong Kong people
feel psychologically closer to locals in Tokyo than locals in Bangkok.
Furthermore, the findings rule out the excitement factor because if it was
indeed associated with tourist misbehaviour, then a higher intention to
misbehave should be reported by both groups regardless of their travel
destinations.

 

Implications
for Destination Marketers

As the study results show that tourists are less likely to
misbehave if they believe their bad behaviours will cause significant harm to
other consumers, the researchers suggest marketers and authorities in the
tourism industry to remind tourists about the negative consequences of even
seemingly minor misbehaviour and for tourists to constantly put themselves in
the shoes of the locals. For example, hotel managers could design table
decorations that remind tourists about the bad consequences of wasting food and
the unnecessary burden on locals due to their wasteful behaviour.

 

“At the end of the day, the best advice is to remind
visitors to ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’,” says
Prof. Wan. “They need to know that their actions will cause the same level
of nuisance and provoke a similar level of disapproval if they were done back
home.”

 

On the other hand, destination marketers should also remind
the tourists that bad conduct may tarnish the image of their home country.
Above all, marketers should try to increase the psychological closeness between
tourists and local residents by highlighting their similarities, such as
promoting a friendly and welcoming image of the destination and the local
residents, thereby creating opportunities for healthy interactions between
tourists and locals.

 

“For instance, Koreans and Americans both love eating
friend chicken and drinking beer. Perhaps destination marketers can think of
some promotional materials based on such similarity,” says Prof. Wan. “However,
the easiest way to make their guests feel at home is always a warm smile.”

Reference:

Lisa
C. Wan, Michael K. Hui and Yao (Chloe) Qiu (2021). “Tourist misbehavior: Psychological
closeness to fellow consumers and informal social control.” Tourism Management, Volume 83, 2021,
Article 104246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2020.104258

 

This
article was first published in the China Business Knowledge (CBK) website by
CUHK Business School: https://bit.ly/3tHsPDB.