Engendering prosociality through tourist-to-tourist interaction in religious tourism: an existential transformative perspective

Abstract

The religious prosociality hypothesis explains why visitors with religious beliefs tend to be more prosocial. Interestingly, in the context of religious tourism, non-believers who travel to religious tourist destinations often experience a prosocial turn similar to believers, but the mechanism behind it remains unclear. Drawing on an existential transformative perspective, this study uses tourist-to-tourist interaction (TTI), prosociality, interpersonal authenticity, and emotional solidarity to investigate the transformative power of religious tourism experiences in making one more prosocial. Questionnaires were distributed in a famous religious tourist attraction in China’s Yunnan Province. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS24.0 and Amos24.0. Research findings include: TTI positively influences interpersonal authenticity and emotional solidarity; interpersonal authenticity and emotional solidarity positively affect prosociality significantly; interpersonal authenticity and emotional solidarity mediate the relationship between TTI and prosociality. This study analyses the mechanism of prosociality aroused by TTI in religious tourism and fills the research gap on how religious tourism affects the relationship between individuals and society. It also provides practical implications for relevant destinations to facilitate TTI to maximize the positive social impacts of religious tourism activities.