Tourists’ negative emotions: antecedents and consequences

Abstract

ABSTRACT The extant literature emphasizes the influence of tourists’ emotional experiences on their future behaviors. However, researchers seldom focused on negative emotions, which trigger stronger reactions than positive emotions. Therefore, this study investigates the destination attributes determining negative emotions and consequent future behavioral intentions. We examined the structural relationships among six destination attributes (i.e. safety, hospitality, infrastructure, environment, unethical business practices, and unexpected incidents), negative emotions (i.e. agonistic emotions and retreat emotions), revisit intention, and negative word-of-mouth intention. The results show that the destination attributes hospitality, infrastructure, environment, unethical business practices, and unexpected incidents significantly influence agonistic emotions, whereas safety, hospitality, and unethical business practices affect retreat emotions. Furthermore, both agonistic emotions and retreat emotions significantly influence future behavioral intentions. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed based on the results.