Sustainable cross-border tourism management: COVID-19 avoidance motive on resident hospitality

Abstract

The psyche-altering effects of COVID-19 pandemic on sustainable tourism behaviors are underexplored. More so, the scant research largely presents tourists’ perspective. Extending this body of work, our study – deploying evolutionary tourism paradigm, examines whether, the why and when perceived COVID-19 infectability (pathogen avoidance motive) impairs resident hospitality, using a multi-wave data from MTurk U.S. workers (N = 857). As predicted, perceived COVID-19 infectability relates positively with tourist negative stereotype, which then relates negatively with resident hospitality. Unexpectedly, perceived COVID-19 infectability’s relation with resident hospitality was positive. However, tourist negative stereotype transmits the negative effect of perceived COVID-19 infectability to resident hospitality. Moreover, COVID-19 origin belief amplifies the positive effect of perceived COVID-19 infectability on tourist negative stereotype, and further strengthens the indirect effect of perceived COVID-19 infectability on resident hospitality through tourist negative stereotype. Theoretical, social, and managerial implications for sustainable tourism development have been discussed.