Abstract
The traditional meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE) industry has been hit hard by social distancing regulations introduced to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, with concerns about pandemic risks and personal hygiene increasing the demand for online MICE technology. With the introduction of innovative new technologies to the MICE industry, it is important to study the psychology of online MICE attendees, particularly the factors affecting their behavioral intention to adopt online MICE technology during the pandemic. This study investigates the attitudes toward attending online MICE since the start of the epidemic based on the health belief model (HBM) and innovation diffusion theory (IDT). A total of 439 valid questionnaires were collected in China and used for structural equation modeling. The results show that the perceived safety threat, the comparative advantage, trialability, and outcome expectations positively impact the attendees' attitudes. Moreover, this study finds that attitude completely mediates the impact of perceived safety threat, comparative advantages, trialability, and outcome expectation on behavioral intention to attend online MICE events. These findings theoretically enrich the understanding of online MICE technology, the HBM, and the IDT and offer managerial implications for MICE organizers and exhibitors.
Highlights
The 2019 new coronavirus (COVID-19) emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and rapidly spread around the world
This study examines the extent to which the behavioral intention of online MICE technology is influenced by the health beliefs, attitudes, and cues to action for attendees during the COVID19 pandemic
Though the health belief model (HBM) was created to understand patient practices in relation to specific diseases or their willingness to have early checkups for these diseases, this study proposes that the model can be used to explain the safety behavior associated with online MICE because this behavior can be viewed as a way to prevent or reduce the probability of contracting a disease [24, 25]
Summary
The 2019 new coronavirus (COVID-19) emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and rapidly spread around the world. The WHO has strongly advised avoiding contact with others and maintaining social distancing due to the significant risk of COVID-19 transmission [2] This global healthcare and economic crisis has negatively affected trade and associated economic activities, including production, transportation, storage, and distribution [3]. The top three MICE-hosting regions include Europe (4,706; 55.96% of the world convention market), Asia (1,501; 17.85%), and North America (980; 11.65%). These three regions account for 85.47% of the total, and the majority of MICE were postponed 3,714 (41%), 2,503 (30%) of these are online MICE. This indicates that while the number of online MICE attendees was lower than the number of postponed attendees, the number of participants of online MICE was higher
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