For a better self: Using comparative feedback to motivate host volunteers

Abstract

Host volunteers are important manpower resources of destination tourism development. While previous literature has explored local volunteers' engagement motivation, few studies have investigated how to maintain and enhance volunteers' motivations in their post-engagement stage. However, this overlooked area is critical in that the common decline of motivation in the prolonged engagement would result in volunteers' decreased efforts and underperformance. The present study thereby suggests comparative feedback as a viable motivational intervention to address this volunteer efforts problem. Specifically, we employ a self-reflexive model to capture the process by which comparative feedback causes motivational effects on volunteer efforts via reflexivity-featured self-conscious emotions as mediating mechanisms, by identifying volunteers' regulatory focus as a boundary condition. The consistent findings from a situational experiment and a laboratory experiment suggest that comparing with the average community volunteer peers can elicit volunteers' intended self-reflexivity and mold their volunteer behavior. Specifically, the downward comparative feedback can evoke volunteers' pride feelings, which motivates them to sustain and increase volunteer efforts, while upward comparative feedback can elicit volunteers' guilt feelings, which motivates them to increase reparative efforts. Moreover, a congruency between the direction of comparative feedback (upward vs. downward) and volunteers’ regulatory focus (promotion vs. prevention) strengthens the motivational effects. Additionally, it shows a match effect between guilt and promotion focus on facilitating volunteer efforts, whereas the effectiveness of pride does not differ based on regulatory focus. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.