What makes customer participation a double-edged sword: The impact and factors of self-serving bias in agritourism

Abstract

Customer participation is indispensable in agritourism, but it could either improve or compromise post-purchase behaviors of customers. This research investigates whether and how the self-serving bias causes the controversial effects of customer participation on post-purchase behaviors in agritourism, and explores factors that weaken such impact of self-serving bias. 640 samples were collected with a simple random sampling for empirical analyses. It is found that in agritourism, the self-serving bias makes the outcome negatively moderate the effects of customer participation on customer satisfaction, word-of-mouth, and revisit intention; but such impact of self-serving bias can be weakened by the completeness and continuity of participative agritourism activities, though their weakening effects vary across different situations. This research adds to the understanding of consumer behaviors in agritourism, and provides managerial implications for agritourism and tourism in general. • Self-serving bias makes customer participation a double-edged sword in agritourism. • The completeness of participative agritourism activities weakens the impact of SSB. • The continuity of participative agritourism activities weakens the impact of SSB. • Factors of SSB do not affect its impact equally in different situations.