Incivility: How tourists cope with relative deprivation

Abstract

Tourist incivility exacerbates tension with locals, jeopardizes tourism sustainability, and tarnishes destination image, prompting investigations into its causes. Leveraging relative deprivation theory, this study examined how two types of relative deprivation influence tourist incivility via a pretest and three scenario-based experiments. Experiments 1a and 1b indicated that relative deprivation increased uncivil behavioral intentions, with economic relative deprivation being more influential than social relative deprivation. Experiment 2 revealed the mediating roles of the psychological needs for self-protection and self-compensation. This study extended relative deprivation theory in the tourism context by focusing on two distinct components. Tourism stakeholders may mitigate uncivil behavior by aligning their offerings with tourists' expenditures and cater to their psychological and emotional needs with adequately equal respect and courtesy. Tourism providers may also offer avenues for tourists to release negative emotions and reverse their defensive motives, reducing the likelihood of incivility during service failures or conflicts.