Protecting yourself and others: festival tourists’ pro-social intentions for wearing a mask, maintaining social distancing, and practicing sanitary/hygiene actions

Abstract

This study investigated the formation of travelers’ pro-social intentions of wearing a mask, maintaining social distancing, and practicing sanitary/hygiene actions in the festival tourism context by merging the extended norm activation model (NAM) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB). The developed theoretical framework was further deepened by evaluating the moderating role of tourists’ perceptions about COVID-19. A sample of 413 Chinese travelers with domestic festival experience before or during the pandemic was used for data analysis. The outcomes revealed that all the hypotheses were statistically supported, and the sufficiency of the proposed model, integrating the NAM and the TPB to predict festival travelers’ pro-social behavioral intentions, was verified. Furthermore, travelers’ perceptions about COVID-19 had a significant moderating effect on four associations: between problem awareness of COVID-19 and ascribed responsibility; ascribed responsibility and anticipated sense of guilt; problem awareness of COVID-19 and attitudes toward pro-social behaviors; and subjective norms and intentions for pro-social behaviors.