Expanding self, breaking stereotypes, and building hospitality: resident mindfulness’ role in host-tourist interaction

Abstract

Mindfulness is a critical instrument in sustainable tourism development. However, existing literature on mindfulness’ role in hospitality and tourism sustainability has mostly focused on tourists’ perspective. In this study, we shift perspective to gain insight into how and when residents’ mindfulness relates to their attitudes and behaviors in host-tourist relation. Integrating mindfulness and motivated information processing theories, we develop and test a theoretical model examining the effect of mindfulness on resident hospitality and tourist negative stereotypes via resident self-transcendence (i.e., residents’ attunement with tourists). Residents’ ability to take tourists’ perspective is proposed to enhance the effect of mindfulness on their sense of attunement with tourists, further augmenting the positive and negative indirect effect of mindfulness on resident hospitality and tourist negative stereotypes, respectively. In a 2-week interval time-lagged study with 429 US residents, we found robust evidence supporting our model. Implications of our findings for host-tourist relationship management are thoroughly discussed.