Does Positive Contact Between Residents and Tourists Stimulate Tourists’ Environmentally Responsible Behavior? The Role of Gratitude and Boundary Conditions

Abstract

This study explored how and when positive contact between residents and tourists stimulates tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior. Drawing on social exchange theory, we verified a moderated mediation model in which gratitude mediated the link between positive contact and tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior, while agreeableness moderated the relationship between positive contact and gratitude. Data were collected from 691 visitors to Mount Wuyi. The findings revealed that positive contact directly affected tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior and that this link was mediated by gratitude. Furthermore, agreeableness significantly moderated the effects of positive contact on gratitude. In particular, the effect of positive contact on gratitude was stronger for tourists with high agreeableness. Additionally, agreeableness also strengthened the indirect relationship between positive contact and tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior through gratitude—which was, again, stronger for highly agreeable tourists.

Keywords

positive contact gratitude environmentally responsible behavior agreeableness social exchange theory

Introduction

Intergroup contact, comprising face-to-face interaction between members of clearly defined groups (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006), can be an effective means of improving intergroup relations and is known to enhance trust and forgiveness by reducing mutual prejudice (Christ and Kauff 2019). Tourism provides a natural platform whereon people from different backgrounds can engage in interpersonal interactions (Fan et al. 2019) and thus also leads to various forms of intergroup contact. Tourists mainly come into contact with four types of groups: residents, other customers, service providers, and companion tourists (Choo and Petrick 2014). Among these contacts, positive contact between tourists and residents—a unique intergroup contact that can promote friendly attitudes and favorable behaviors among both tourists and residents (e.g., Fan et al. 2017a; Joo et al. 2018; Lin et al. 2019; Luo et al. 2015; Tung 2019)—is fundamental and crucial for the success of sustainable tourism (e.g., Bimonte and Punzo 2016; Cheng et al. 2019; Eusébio et al. 2018; Wang et al. 2018; Woosnam et al. 2018). Considering its remarkable benefits, positive contact between tourists and residents has been receiving considerable attention in recent years.

Based on the perspective of tourists’ perception, the existing literature has mainly focused on the effect of positive contact on tourists’ psychological and behavioral dimensions. Examples include inspiring memorable tourism experiences (Chen and Rahman 2018), decreasing culture and social distance (Fan et al. 2017b, 2020; Yilmaz and Tasci 2015), promoting positive attitudes and place attachment (Joo et al. 2019; Lin et al. 2019; Woosnam et al. 2018; Yu and Lee 2014), improving perception of destination image (Stylidis 2020), and triggering post-travel behavioral intentions toward destinations (Chen and Rahman 2018; Nam et al. 2016). However, few studies have investigated whether positive contact influences tourists’ on-site behavior. Wang et al. (2018) use the auto-ethnography research method to argue that the host’s efforts help shape tourists’ green behavior. Thus, residents’ positive contact with tourists may stimulate environmentally responsible behavior (ERB) among tourists. Environmentally responsible behavior is defined as any action taken to reduce adverse impacts at a specific destination (Lee et al. 2013; Steg and Vlek 2009) and is thus an important factor that can prevent ecological degradation at tourist destinations (Lee et al. 2013; Steg and Vlek 2009) and fosters the sustainable development of the ecological environments of tourism locations (Cheng et al. 2019; Dolnicar et al. 2019; Wang et al. 2018). Therefore, it is extremely meaningful to investigate the relationship between positive contact and tourists’ ERB.

However, few studies have investigated the transmission mechanism of positive contact arousing tourists’ ERB. Wang et al. (2018), the only study on ERB in the context of residents–tourists interaction, focused on the role of the host in promoting tourists’ green behavior and failed to explain the psychological mechanism behind it. The literature suggests that there are two equally viable mechanisms of residents–tourists contact/interaction: relation and experience. For instance, Nam et al. (2016) argued from the relational perspective that the helpfulness of local people can evoke tourists’ word-of-mouth intentions via personal connections. In the context of host-guest interaction, Chen and Rahman (2018) argued that memorable tourism experience is the transmission mechanism in the link between cross-cultural contact and tourist loyalty. These viewpoints, emphasizing the importance of relation and experience in residents–tourists interaction, have greatly deepened our understanding of the role of positive contact. Nevertheless, these studies focus on reactions to a social phenomenon and ignore the interactive process between residents and tourists, particularly the exchange of social-emotional resources. Positive contact, such as acts of kindness on the part of unfamiliar local residents, may evoke tourist gratitude inasmuch as residents provide valuable social-emotional resources (Filep et al. 2017). Meanwhile, being a positive emotion (McCullough et al. 2004), gratitude can promote a motivation to enter into exchange with the benefactor (Bartlett and DeSteno 2006; DeSteno et al. 2010). Hence, a gratitude perspective based on social exchange theory (SET) may be instrumental in understanding the driving mechanism of tourists’ ERB. However, the tourism literature lacks gratitude research in the context of residents–tourists contact (Filep et al. 2017). Our theoretical understanding of the psychological mechanism behind the positive contact that stimulates tourists’ ERB is still limited and fragmentary, impeding the development of destination management practices.

To address that gap, this study uses SET to shed light on the mechanism of positive contact arousing tourists’ ERB. Social exchange theory outlines three main constructs: socio-emotional resources, relationship quality, and reciprocity (Blau 1964). Among these, socio-emotional resources tend to comprise symbols of supportiveness, helpfulness, and friendliness (Blau 1964; Cropanzano and Mitchell 2005). Not only that, SEt also posits that socio-emotional resources offered by initial actors can promote high-quality relationships between the parties, triggering a behavioral response from the recipient (Blau 1964; Cropanzano et al. 2017). Thus, SET constructs a “macro-structure” wherein relationship quality is the transmitting mechanism of the socio-emotional resources that induce reciprocal behavior. Since gratitude often reflects a high-quality relationship between two parties (Fazal-e-Hasan et al. 2017; Hasan et al. 2017; Jin et al. 2018; Palmatier et al. 2009), this study views it as a potential relationship quality construct and argues that it can explain the link between positive contact and tourists’ ERB. Additionally, the process by which socio-emotional resources promote high-quality social exchange relationships is moderated by the characteristics of the exchange partner (Dirks and Skarlicki 2009; Mitchell et al. 2012). Hence, this study also considers agreeable personality characteristics to explore the boundary conditions of the positive contact that triggers gratitude. Based on the dynamic nature of the abovementioned constructs, we propose a model (see Figure 1) that incorporates positive contact (socio-emotional resources), tourist gratitude (relationship quality), ERB (reciprocal response), and agreeableness (characteristics of the exchange partner) in order to explore how and when positive contact stimulates tourists’ ERB.

Figure 1.

Theoretical model for this study.

Based on this model, we employ SPSS PROCESS macro model 7 (Hayes 2018) to carry out an empirical analysis with three aims. The first is to empirically examine whether positive contact stimulates tourists’ ERB within the framework of residents–tourists interaction. The second is to test the mediating effect of gratitude on the relationship between positive contact and tourists’ ERB. The third is to investigate the moderating effect of agreeableness on the link between positive contact and gratitude, as well as the indirect effect of positive contact on tourists’ ERB through gratitude. The results offer several important theoretical and practical contributions.

Our primary theoretical contributions are to the residents–tourists interaction literature, especially to research on the exchange of socio-emotional resources between residents and tourists. First, this study enriches the theoretical basis of the residents–tourists interaction literature by extending the resource category of social exchange, from economic resources to socio-emotional resources. Second, by drawing on SET, this study tests the mediating effects of gratitude, thus addressing the lack of research on the influencing mechanism of positive contact on ERB. Finally, the study’s research model provides a basic theoretical framework that can be used to test and examine similar variables in related studies.

This study also makes practical contributions to the tourism sector. It investigates when and why residents–tourists positive contact is related to tourists’ ERB. Given the crucial role played by positive contact in intergroup relationships (Christ and Kauff 2019; Fan et al. 2017a; Woosnam et al. 2018), the study’s findings should offer significant implications for local organizations and destination managers regarding how to maximize the effects of positive contact and promote tourists’ ERB.

Theory and Hypotheses

Social Exchange Theory

Social exchange theory provides an analytical framework for reciprocity (Cropanzano et al. 2017; Mitchell et al. 2012), which has been widely used to examine successful interactions between two parties (Mitchell et al. 2012). In particular, the exchange relationship often stems from a successful series of interactions between the parties (Mitchell et al. 2012), which is conducive to understanding the process of residents-tourists interaction. According to SET, the resources individuals exchange can be divided into two categories: economic and socio-emotional. Economic resources comprise anything of economic value that can meet financial needs, while socio-emotional resources are usually deemed to comprise supportiveness, helpfulness, and friendliness (Blau 1964; Cropanzano and Mitchell 2005).

Most studies that have applied SET to investigate residents–tourists relationships have focused on the exchange of economic resources, rather than socio-emotional resources. For instance, scholars have examined residents’ attitudes toward and perceptions of tourism (e.g., Chang 2021; Kang and Lee 2018; Nunkoo and So 2015; Rasoolimanesh et al. 2015; Shakeela and Weaver 2018). These studies have suggested that residents weigh benefits and costs and have argued that residents who gain economic benefits are prone to express positive attitudes toward tourism (Kang and Lee 2018). In fact, the socio-emotional resources (e.g., supportiveness, helpfulness, or friendliness) that do not have exact prices (Blau 1964), do exist in the exchange process of residents–tourists interaction (Lawler and Thye 1999; Maruyama et al. 2019). However, socio-emotional resources, which differ from economic resources (Blau 1964), have not been sufficient attention in the application of SET.

Another limitation in the application of SET is that most studies on residents–tourists interaction have ignored the role of emotional dynamics in SET. Social exchange theory has long been criticized for neglecting the emotional factors in resident–tourism interaction (e.g., Boley et al. 2014; Maruyama et al. 2016; Ward and Berno 2011). Some scholars have suggested that clarifying residents’ attitudes toward tourism requires combining SET with other theories (e.g., Boley et al. 2014; Ward and Berno, 2011). However, Lawler and Thye (1999)—who incorporated emotion into the theoretical system of SET, which they enriched and developed—argued that social exchange can generate various feelings, such as joy, gratitude, or fear. Consist with this, Maruyama et al. (2019) discuss the influence of emotion generated through SET among residents on their attitudes toward tourism, which further confirmed the role of SET in explaining emotional dynamics. Nevertheless, it has been grossly neglected in studies that have applied SET in the residents–tourists interaction context.

Positive Contact between Residents and Tourists

The concept of positive contact, which stems from the intergroup contact hypothesis in social psychology, refers to the degree to which an individual is positively treated by members of the external group during an interaction (Meleady and Vermue 2019; Reimer et al. 2017). This study operationally defines positive contact as the extent to which tourists are positively treated by residents during residents–tourists interaction. The existing literature on residents–tourists interaction has generated important insights, which can be divided into having the following three tendencies. First, most studies on social contact have focused on contact quality and contact quantity (or frequency). Scholars have employed either contact quality or quantity (Aleshinloye et al. 2020; Woosnam and Aleshinloye 2013; Woosnam and Norman 2010) or both to measure residents–tourists contact (Fan et al. 2017b; Luo et al. 2015; Meng and Han 2018; Yilmaz and Tasci 2015). Second, contact activities have been used to study cross-cultural residents–tourists contact. For this purpose, specific activities or communication involving intercultural interactions have been measured (e.g., Chen and Rahman 2018; Gnoth and Zins 2013; Reisinger and Turner 2002a, 2002b; Yu and Lee 2014). Additionally, residents’ attitudes and behavior toward tourists—such as the emotional solidarity of residents, humorous interactions, the helpfulness of local people, and residents’ efforts—have been considered as forms of residents–tourists contact (e.g., Nam et al. 2016; Wang et al. 2018; Woosnam 2011, 2012). These studies, exploring positive residents-tourists contact, have reached some meaningful conclusions within their respective research frameworks. However, very few studies have realized the effect of contact valence on tourist behavior (Tse and Tung, 2021). Thus, questions remain concerning how and when positive contact stimulates tourists’ on-site behavior. Building on SET, this study investigates the transmission mechanism of positive contact and the boundary conditions of its impact on tourists’ ERB in the context of residents–tourists interaction.

Positive Contact and Tourists’ ERB

Environmentally responsible behavior comprises the actions that individuals purposely take to reduce adverse impacts on a specific destination (Lee et al. 2013; Steg and Vlek 2009). Because of the potential benefits of tourists’ ERB to the destination, much research has been conducted on its antecedents, such as demographic and subjective norms (e.g., Han et al. 2017; Lee and Jan 2015), destination perception and relationship quality (e.g., He et al. 2018; Lin et al. 2019), involvement and recreation experience (e.g., Lee and Jan 2015; Lin and Lee 2020), knowledge and attitudes (e.g., Gupta et al. 2021; Holmes et al. 2021; Passafaro 2020), subjective well-being and satisfaction (e.g., Chiu et al. 2014; Su et al. 2018), emotional and place attachment (e.g., Su and Swanson 2017), ascribed responsibility (e.g., Confente and Scarpi 2021; Han et al. 2018), and social responsibility (e.g., Su and Swanson 2017; Su et al. 2020). However, most of these studies have focused on the factors influencing tourists’ ERB at the individual or destination levels and have not considered the effect of the interactions between residents and tourists. Thus, the link between positive contact and tourists’ ERB has not received adequate attention.

we argue that positive contact serves as a socio-emotional resource that facilitates social exchanges between residents and tourists. As the objects exchanged, socio-emotional resources tend to be symbols of supportiveness, helpfulness, and friendliness (Blau 1964; Cropanzano and Mitchell 2005), stemming from behavior that is valuable to another (Blau 1964; Molm 2006). After tourists have arrived at a destination, the purposes for which they contact residents include information or help seeking, social interaction, problem solving, experience sharing, and destination exploration (Lin et al. 2019). Thus, positive contact, which reflects the degree of residents’ positive attitudes toward tourists, is valuable for the tourist experience (Chen and Rahman 2018; Fan et al. 2020; Nam et al. 2016). Not only that, following Foa’s (1971) resource classification, positive contact involves at least three types of resources: love, information, and status. Love refers to an expression of warmth and comfort (Foa 1971; Foa and Foa 2012), such as residents’ goodwill toward tourists. Information includes any advice, opinion, or instruction (Foa 1971; Foa and Foa 2012), such as social interaction with tourists to offer help and share local culture with them. Status is expressed as esteem (Foa 1971; Foa and Foa 2012), such as making friends with tourists and treating them fairly. These resources (love, information, status) symbolize supportiveness, helpfulness, and friendliness. Thus, positive contact meets the criteria for socio-emotional resources outlined by SET (Blau 1964; Cropanzano and Mitchell 2005).

As a kind of reciprocal behavior toward residents, ERB is dependent on positive contact (a set of socio-emotional resources). According to SET, the socio-emotional resources that can be transmitted through interpersonal behavior contribute to a reciprocal relationship (Mitchell et al. 2012). Reciprocity, wherein one side can trigger a response from the other, is one of the core assumptions of SET (Molm 2006). In response to the initiating action (offering resources), the individual, often a beneficiary, may decide to reciprocate with good behavior (Cropanzano et al. 2017; Mitchell et al. 2012). In accordance with this, positive contact may oblige tourists to act favorably toward local residents inasmuch as their reciprocal motivation impels them to repay. Thus, as a kind of behavior beneficial to destinations (Cheng et al. 2019; Dolnicar et al. 2019; Wang et al. 2018), ERB is likely to be tourists’ reciprocal response to the local residents. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: Positive contact is positively associated with tourists’ ERB.

Mediating Role of Gratitude

Gratitude has been identified as a trait, emotion, and mood (Ma et al. 2017). As a trait, gratitude is a stable affective disposition that reflects an individual’s capacity to experience a sense of thankfulness (McCullough et al. 2002). As an emotion, gratitude is an emotional response to others’ benevolence, arising from the benefit received from a benefactor (Emmons and McCullough 2003; Ma et al. 2017). As a mood, gratitude is a positive state resulting from the appreciation of what is valuable and cherished in life (Lambert et al. 2009). Considering the purpose of this study, we adopt the concept of gratitude as an emotion and focus on understanding the role of benefit-triggered gratitude. With the development of positive psychology, benefit-triggered gratitude—regarded as an important component of the study of social relations and reciprocal behavior (Gulliford et al. 2013)—has been widely studied by scholars from disciplines such as politics, sociology, economics, and management (e.g., Bechtel and Hainmueller 2011; DeSteno et al. 2014; Fehr et al. 2017; Simpson et al. 2018). In earlier study, Kolyesnikova and Dodd (2008) have investigated the role of gratitude in wine tourist purchasing behavior. Recently, scholars have focused either on exploring the antecedents and consequences of customer gratitude in restaurants (Gong et al. 2020; Jin et al. 2018) or on identifying and evaluating residents’ acts of kindness that can stimulate tourist gratitude (Filep et al. 2017). Compared with other social disciplines, research on gratitude in tourism is extraordinarily insufficient, in particular, the role of tourist gratitude in the context of resident-tourist interaction.

Gratitude in social exchange, representing a high-quality exchange relationship, is likely to be the transmission mechanism of the positive contact that stimulates ERB. According to SET, relationship quality, which reflects relational strength, is very important for achieving both parties’ exchange goals (Blau 1964; Cropanzano et al. 2017). As a higher-order constructs, high-quality social exchange relationships are often characterized by trust, satisfaction, commitment, and gratitude (Blau 1964; Huntley 2006; Palmatier et al. 2009). Among these characteristics, gratitude that is always embedded in the relationship between the benefactor and beneficiary, plays a crucial role in establishing and maintaining social relations (Komter 2004). More importantly, gratitude is often regarded as a more powerful variable reflecting high-quality relationships than other relationship constructs (e.g., trust, satisfaction, commitment; Fazal-e-Hasan et al. 2017; Hasan 2017; Jin et al. 2018; Palmatier et al. 2009). Thus, this study adopts gratitude variable to represent a high-quality social exchange relationship in residents-tourists interaction. More importantly, SEt also offers an analytical framework for interpreting the role of relationship quality in the process of reciprocity, which helps to understand how actors providing valuable socio-emotional resources can evoke reciprocal behavior (Cropanzano et al. 2017). Thus, as a potentially important relationship construct (Palmatier et al. 2009), gratitude is likely to help us understand the interactive mechanism of social exchange between residents and tourists.

We speculate that positive contact can enhance tourist gratitude toward residents. First, one important function of positive contact is relationship building. According to SET, socio-emotional resources tend to engender a high-quality relationship when the parties engage in a series of resource exchanges (Blau 1964). Hence, positive contact, considered as a socio-emotional resource in social exchange, can improve residents-tourists relationship. Furthermore, positive contact is instrumental in building a high-quality social exchange relationship characterized by gratitude. In the tourism activities, residents are not obliged to treat tourists with supportiveness, friendliness, and helpfulness; thus, positive contact signals the residents’ voluntary desire to perform the acts of kindness. Moreover, tourists are unfamiliar with their environment and are surrounded by strangers; thus, positive contact is extremely valuable for them. In addition, providing tourists with a positive contact experience costs residents’ time and energy. Across these aforementioned situations, positive contact meet the three conditions for the formation of gratitude, including voluntary help provided from the residents, favorable values to the tourists and cost paid by the residents (Filep et al. 2017). As noted by Weiner (2014), individual is being grateful toward others when others have intentionally given them something valuable and costly. Therefore, gratitude is probably a proximal variable of positive contact.

Meanwhile, tourist gratitude facilitates their ERB. As a positive emotion, gratitude can evoke moral action and enhance pro-sociality inasmuch as grateful individuals often feel the urge to reciprocate to benefit their benefactor (Bartlett and DeSteno 2006; Lawler 2001; Ma et al. 2017). Thus, gratitude that reflects high-quality relationships (Blau 1964; Lambert et al. 2010) motivates tourists to repay the residents’ supportiveness, helpfulness, friendliness, and relationship-building efforts. According to SET, recipients of socio-economic resources tend to reciprocate in kind by engaging in more positive behavioral responses (Blau 1964; Cropanzano et al. 2017; Mitchell et al. 2012). One significant way for tourists to express gratitude is to engage in ERB, which reduces the negative impact on the destination and benefits both the residents and the destination as a whole (Cheng et al. 2019; Dolnicar et al. 2019; Wang et al. 2018). Hence, tourists who are grateful to local residents are more likely to engage in ERB.

Based on the viewpoints discussed above, we postulate that positive contact induces gratitude and further promotes tourists’ ERB. Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 2: Gratitude mediates the relationship between positive contact and ERB.

Moderating Role of Agreeableness

According to SET, the characteristics of the exchange partners determine perceptions of others’ behavioral motivation (Mitchell et al. 2012). When receiving unexpected help from strangers, individuals with positive personality traits tend to consider other people as kindhearted (Jayawickreme and Blackie 2014), while individuals with dark personality traits may assume ulterior motives (Moor and Anderson 2019), which affects the formation of high-quality social exchange relationships (Dirks and Skarlicki 2009). In other words, tourists’ traits determine the extent to which positive contact will affect gratitude. Agreeableness is an important trait variable affecting contact effectiveness, reflecting individual differences in interpersonal interaction (Bai et al. 2020; Medler-Liraz 2020), especially in social exchange (Leybman et al. 2011). This study explores whether agreeableness moderates the link between positive contact and gratitude.

Agreeableness refers to the tendency to be sympathetic, humble, cooperative, altruistic, straightforward, and benevolent (Costa et al. 1991). As one of the Big Five Personality Traits, agreeableness, which is conducive to shaping social attitudes and philosophies of life (Costa et al. 1991), affects how individuals interpret external events (Fleeson and Jayawickreme 2015; Leybman et al. 2011). It focuses on individual differences in the orientation of interpersonal relationships, thus moderating various kinds of interpersonal behaviors (Liu et al. 2018). According to Costa et al. (1991), individuals with higher level of agreeableness not only tend to judge and form attitudes under the guidance of sympathy but are also inclined to attribute benevolent intent to others. By contrast, less agreeable individuals are deemed to be relatively intolerant, cold, opinionated, and snobbish (Goldberg 1992). Similar to cynical individuals, they are more likely to consider others as dishonest and malicious (Costa et al. 1991).

In this study, we argue that agreeableness strengthens the link between positive contact and gratitude. Highly agreeable individuals with inherent pro-social cognition dispositions tend to interpret human nature from a positive perspective (Costa et al. 1991; Meier et al. 2006). They believe others to be honest, trustworthy, and meaningful (Costa et al., 1991; Goldberg 1992). They are also willing to establish a positive relationship during interpersonal interactions (Liu et al. 2018), which helps them to acquire a memorable experience in the process of exchange. Thus, highly agreeable tourists are not only prone to regard residents’ contact motivation as one of goodwill but are also likely to obtain more significant socio-emotional resources in their interactions with residents. More importantly, altruistic motives of others perceived by recipients are the main determinants of gratitude induced by external events (Weiner 2014). Hence, for tourists with high agreeableness, positive contact that is interpreted as a set of valuable resources resulting from altruistic motivation, can helps them obtain more valuable resources and further enhance their feeling of gratitude. Contrariwise, less agreeable individuals with a strongly defensive psychology are often suspicious and distrustful of kindness (Costa et al. 1991; Goldberg 1992). This means that they might regard residents’ interactions with them as having ulterior motives or take precautions against them. Considering the role of motivation attribution in the link between external events and gratitude(Weiner 2014), the effect of positive contact on gratitude will be weakened. We thus argue that positive contact is more likely to enhance the gratitude of highly agreeable tourists than to enhance that of tourists with low agreeableness. Hence, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3: Agreeableness moderates the link between positive contact and tourist gratitude, and the positive relationship is stronger when the level of agreeableness is high.

Thus, we can see that gratitude mediates the link between positive contact and tourists’ ERB, and agreeableness moderates the relationship between positive contact and gratitude. Drawing on SET, the formation process of the social exchange relationship will be affected by the traits of the exchange partners (Dirks and Skarlicki 2009; Mitchell et al. 2012). Thus, agreeableness is likely to affect the mediating effect of gratitude, which involves the phenomenon of moderated mediation (Edwards and Lambert 2007). Hence, we posit that agreeableness moderates the intensity of the mediating effect of gratitude in the link between positive contact and tourists’ ERB. Since this study predicts a stronger relationship between positive contact and gratitude among highly agreeable tourists, the positive indirect effect of positive contact on tourists’ ERB mediated through gratitude should be stronger among tourists with higher agreeableness. We thus propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 4: Agreeableness moderates the indirect effect of positive contact on tourists’ ERB through gratitude, such that the indirect effect is stronger for tourists with high agreeableness.

Method

Data Collection and Sample

Participants were drawn from among visitors to Mount Wuyi, Fujian, China. Mount Wuyi, a cultural and natural world heritage site, attracts more than 15 million tourists annually and is well-known for its scenic beauty and cultural resources (e.g., Ancient Ruins, Jiuqu River, Tianyou Peak, Dahongpao Tea). It was selected as the study site for four reasons. (a) It usually takes more than two days for tourists to complete a visit to Mount Wuyi, providing sufficient time for resident–host interaction. (b) Mount Wuyi acts as both a living space for local residents and a recreational space for tourists, thus making it easy for them to interact. (c) The tea culture in Mount Wuyi can shorten the psychological distance between residents and tourists, thus creating conditions that foster communication. (d) Finally, amid the increasing number of visitors to Mount Wuyi, it is important to explore how potential antecedents promote tourists’ ERB. Visitors coming from outside Fujian Province participated in a random sampling questionnaire survey at the Mount Wuyi railway station. The randomness of the sampling is mainly reflected in terms of time (i.e., we randomly selected five distinct periods of time from August to October 2019) and space (i.e., we randomly intercepted potential participants). To ensure valid samples, we asked the respondents if they were visiting and willing to participate in the survey. After completing the survey, each respondent was given a local souvenir, which was aimed at encouraging the respondents to fill in the questionnaires carefully.

We distributed 790 questionnaires. Of these, 691 questionnaires were completed and reclaimed, for a response rate of 87.5%. As shown in Table 1, 60.6% of the respondents were female, 30.5% were between the ages of 30 and 39, and 44.8% were 40 or older. Regarding education, 69.5% of the visitors had received higher education. Concerning monthly income, 38.8% of the respondents had a monthly income of between ¥5,001 and ¥6,000, and 28.7% earned between ¥4,001 and ¥5,000. Additionally, 78.0% of the respondents were visiting Mount Wuyi for the first time.

Table 1.

Sample Profile (N = 691).

Demographic	Total number	Percentage
Gender
Male	272	39.4
Female	419	60.6
Age (years)
<20	34	4.9
20–29	136	19.7
30–39	211	30.5
40–49	157	22.7
≥50	153	22.1
Education
Junior high or below	211	30.5
College	202	29.2
Undergraduate	240	34.7
Master	31	4.5
Doctor	7	1.0
Monthly income
≤3,000	49	7.6
3,001–4,000	60	9.2
4,001–5,000	18	28.7
5,001–6,000	252	38.8
≥6,000	102	15.7
Missing	42	6.1
Visiting times
First-time	539	78.0
Repeat	152	22.0

Measures

Given that the study was conducted in China, we translated all the items into Chinese using back-translation procedure. To guarantee questionnaire quality, we invited two English-speaking tourism experts to give advice on whether the item expressions were accurate. Finally, we designed a questionnaire for measurement with acceptable reliability and validity (see Table 2).

Table 2.

The Reliability and Validity of Questionnaires.

Variables (source)	Mean	SD	Skewness	Kurtosis	Loading	T	CR	AVE
Positive contact (Reimer et al. 2017)
How often did you experience being supported in contact with local residents.	3.95	0.74	−0.16	−0.59	0.67	25.88	0.86	0.55
How often did you experience being helped in contact with local residents.	4.05	0.70	−0.20	−0.57	0.77	40.17
How often did you experience being complimented in contact with local residents.	4.02	0.74	−0.23	−0.60	0.78	42.13
How often did you experience befriended in contact with local residents.	4.09	0.70	−0.22	−0.58	0.78	47.38
How often did you experience being welcomed in contact with local residents.	4.18	0.64	−0.28	−0.23	0.71	28.51
Gratitude: (Emmons and McCullough 2003)
I feel appreciative to the residents.	4.22	0.72	−0.81	0.92	0.78	30.90	0.81	0.59
I feel grateful to the residents.	4.24	0.64	−0.43	0.09	0.81	33.26
I feel thankful to the resident.	4.08	0.72	−0.47	0.07	0.72	25.35
Agreeableness (Gosling et al. 2013)
I see myself as sympathetic, warm.	4.04	0.81	−0.68	0.47	0.77	15.09	0.75	0.60
I see myself as critical, quarrelsome.	4.01	0.81	−0.62	0.32	0.78	14.72	0.75	0.60
Environmentally responsibility behavior (He et al., 2018)
I follow the legal ways to stop the destruction of the environment of Wuyi Mountain.	4.19	0.74	−0.83	1.24	0.80	38.44	0.90	0.66
When I see garbage and tree branches on the ground, I will pick them up and put them in the trash.	4.19	0.73	−0.72	0.86	0.83	44.97
If there are environmental clean-up activities at Wuyi Mountain, I would be willing to attend.	4.18	0.72	−0.61	0.46	0.87	60.85
I try to convince others to protect the natural environment at Wuyi Mountain.	3.90	0.84	−0.19	−0.63	0.72	29.29
When I see others engaged in the destruction of the environment at Wuyi Mountain, I will report it to the destination administration or relevant units.	4.10	0.83	−0.59	−0.12	0.82	52.53

Note: N = 691. SD = standard deviation; CR = composite reliability; AVE = average variance extracted.

Positive contact

We assessed positive contact using Reimer et al.’s (2017) five-item scale. Respondents reported the frequency with which they had a variety of positive experiences with local residents (from 1 = “never” to 5 = “very often”). Sample items include “How often did you experience being supported in contact with local residents?” and “How often did you experience being helped in contact with local residents?” The reliability of this scale was 0.86.

Gratitude

Gratitude was measured using Emmons and McCullough’s (2003) scale, which comprises three adjectives: grateful, thankful, and appreciative. Respondents reported the extent to which they felt gratitude toward the local residents (from 1 = “disagree completely” to 5 = “agree completely”). Sample items include “I feel thankful to the local residents” and “I feel grateful to the local residents.” The reliability of the scale was 0.81.

ERB

We assessed ERB using He et al.’s (2018) measure, which contains five items. Respondents reported the extent to which they engaged in ERB in Mount Wuyi (from 1 = “disagree completely” to 5 = “agree completely”). Sample items include “I follow the legal ways to stop the destruction of the environment of Wuyi Mountain” and “When I see garbage and tree branches on the ground, I pick them up and put them in the trash.” The reliability of this scale was 0.90.

Agreeableness

We adopted Gosling et al.’s (2003) scale of personality traits comprising two items to measure agreeableness. Response options ranged from 1 = “disagree completely” to 5 = “agree completely.” Sample items include “I see myself as sympathetic, warm” and “I see myself as critical, quarrelsome.” The scale’s reliability was 0.75.

Control variables

The literature suggests a significant relationship between demographic background and ERB (e.g., Ifegbesan and Rampedi 2018; Lee and Jan 2015). Moreover, ERB may differ between first-time and repeat visitors (Su and Swanson 2017). Thus, gender, age, education, monthly income, and visiting times were used as control variables.

Analytic Strategy

We used SPSS 25.0 and Mplus 7.4 to verify and test the moderated mediation model built as part of this study. First, we performed confirmatory factor analysis using Mplus 7.4. Based on the values of composite reliability and average variance extracted (Fornell and Larcker 1981; Hair et al. 2014), we tested the reliability and validity of the proposed model. Moreover, several preliminary statistical verifications were performed to check for common method variance. Furthermore, with the help of SPSS PROCESS macro models 7 (Hayes 2018), we not only examined the direct effect in the model, but also tested whether agreeableness moderated the indirect relationship between positive contact and ERB through gratitude. In addition, to more vividly reveal the moderating effect of agreeability, we conducted a simple slope analysis (Aiken and West 1991).

Results

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

We performed confirmatory factor analyses to examine the validity of positive contact, agreeableness, gratitude, and ERB. As Table 3 shows, the four-factor model of positive contact, agreeableness, gratitude, and ERB (χ²[84] = 298.30, comparative fit index [CFI] = 0.94, Tucker–Lewis index [TLI] = 0.93, root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = 0.06, and standardized root mean square residual [SRMR] = 0.04) had a better goodness of fit than any other alternative model, including the single-factor model (χ²[90] = 1,784.83, CFI = 0.54, TLI = 0.46, RMSEA = 0.17, and SRMR = 0.15). Furthermore, the four-factor model demonstrated reliability, as the composite reliability (CR) for each variable ranged from 0.75 to 0.90 (see Table 2), exceeding the recommended cut-off of 0.70 (Hair et al. 2014). In addition, the average variance extracted (AVE) scores of all the factors were greater than the commonly agreed criterion of 0.50 (Fornell and Larcker 1981). In addition, the square root of the AVE score for each construct was greater than the inter-construct correlation (see Table 4), and support for discriminant validity was also observed (Fornell and Larcker 1981). The above results suggest that the four-factor model had the best discriminant validity and distinctly reflected the four constructs.

Table 3.

Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis.

Model	Factor structure	χ²	df	χ²/df	CFI	TLI	RMSEA	SRMR
Five-factor model	PC, GR, ERB, AG, CMV	298.73	86	3.47	0.94	0.93	0.06	0.04
Four-factor model	PC, GR, ERB, AG	298.30	84	3.55	0.94	0.93	0.06	0.04
Three-factor model 1	PC, ERB, GR + AG	499.90	87	5.75	0.89	0.87	0.08	0.06
Three-factor model 2	ERB, AG, PC + GR	521.64	87	5.99	0.88	0.86	0.09	0.07
Three-factor model 3	PC, AG, ERB + GR	787.23	87	9.05	0.81	0.77	0.11	0.11
Two-factor model 1	ERB, PC + GR + AG	839.53	89	9.43	0.80	0.76	0.11	0.09
Two-factor model 2	PC + AG, GR + ERB	998.76	89	11.22	0.75	0.71	0.12	0.12
Single-factor model	TGH + OP + PE + BI	1,784.83	90	19.83	0.54	0.46	0.17	0.15

Note: N = 691. PC = positive contact; GR = gratitude; AG = agreeableness; ERB = environmentally responsible behavior; CMV = common method variance; CFI = comparative fit index; TLI = Tucker-Lewis index; RMSEA = root mean square error of approximation; SRMR = standardized root mean square residual. “+” means combining into one factor.

Table 4.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations of All Variables in This Study.

Variables	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
1. Gender
2. Age	−0.08*
3. Education	−0.00	−0.15**
4.Monthly income	−0.02	0.34**	0.08*
5. Visiting times	0.04	0.08*	0.04	−0.11**
6. Positive contact	−0.02	0.05	−0.07	−0.08*	0.12**	0.74^a
7. Gratitude	−0.01	0.01	0.01	−0.13**	0.21**	0.47**	0.77^a
8. Agreeableness	0.06	0.10*	−0.05	−0.09*	0.34**	0.21**	0.26**	0.77^a
9. ERB	0.00	0.05	−0.06	−0.13**	0.14**	0.34**	0.38**	0.18**	0.81^a
Mean	0.61	3.37	2.16	3.46	0.22	4.06	4.18	4.03	4.11
SD	0.49	1.17	0.95	0.10	0.42	0.56	0.59	0.72	0.65

Note: N = 691.

Square root of AVE.

p < .05 (two-tailed). **p < .01 (two-tailed).

Although the data were collected over five distinct periods, each tourist was surveyed only once. This implies that common method variance may still be a potential menace when exploring the relationships among the variables. Following Tu et al. (2020), we checked the risk level of common method variance by controlling for unmeasured latent method factors (Podsakoff et al. 2003). Specifically, we introduced a latent variable, CMV, which loaded on all items of the four latent variables (positive contact, agreeableness, gratitude, ERB). The fitting index values of the five-factor model (χ²[86] = 298.73, CFI = 0.94, TLI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.06, and SRMR = 0.04) were similar to those of the four-factor model. Meanwhile, the average variance of the CMV factors was 0.38, which was less than the cutoff value (0.50). In summary, CMV had only a slight effect on inflating the hypothesized relationship.

Descriptive Statistics

Table 4 shows the results of the descriptive statistics, including means, standard deviations, and correlations among the variables. The results show that positive contact was positively correlated with gratitude (γ = 0.47, p < .01), agreeableness (γ = 0.21, p < .01), and ERB (γ = 0.34, p < .01). Gratitude was positively related to agreeableness (γ = 0.26, p < .01) and ERB (γ = 0.38, p < .01). In addition, agreeableness was positively correlated with ERB (γ = 0.18, p < .01). These significant correlations provided preliminary support for the subsequent regression analysis.

Hypothesis Testing

Table 5 presents the results of the moderated mediation analysis. Hypothesis 1 postulated that positive contact is positively related to ERB. As Table 5 shows, considering the control variables (gender, age, education, monthly income, and visiting times) and mediator variable (gratitude), the direct effect of positive contact on tourists’ ERB was found to be statistically significant (β = 0.24, p < .01), and the 95% confidence interval (CI) did not include zero (0.15, 0.33). Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported.

Table 5.

Results of Regression Analyses.

Variables	Gratitude			Environmentally responsible behavior
Variables	β	SE	95% CI	β	SE	95% CI
Constant	4.24**	0.11	(4.01, 4.46)	2.96**	0.24	(2.50, 3.43)
Control variables
Gender	−0.02	0.04	(−0.10,0.06)	0.02	0.05	(−0.07, 0.12)
Age	−0.01	0.02	(−0.05, 0.03)	0.03	0.02	(−0.02, 0.07)
Education	0.04	0.02	(−0.01, 0.08)	−0.02	0.03	(−0.07, 0.04)
Monthly income	−0.03	0.02	(−0.07, 0.01)	−0.05*	0.02	(−0.10, −0.01)
Visiting times	0.12*	0.05	(0.02, 0.23)	0.08	0.06	(−0.03, 0.20)
Independent variable
Positive contact	0.43**	0.04	(0.36, 0.50)	0.24**	0.05	(0.15, 0.33)
Mediator variable
Gratitude				0.29**		(0.20, 0.38 )
Moderator variable
Agreeableness	0.13**	0.03	(0.07, 0.19)
Moderating effect
Positive contact × Agreeableness	0.25**	0.06	(0.15, 0.36)
Indirect effects
Gratitude (low-agreeableness)				0.07	0.02	(0.04, 0.12)
Gratitude (mean-agreeableness)				0.13	0.02	(0.08, 0.18)
Gratitude (high-agreeableness)				0.18	0.03	(0.12, 0.25)
Index of moderated mediation				0.07	0.02	(0.04, 0.11)
R ²	0.29			0.19
F	32.76**			21.98**

Note: N = 691. SE = standard error. 95% CI = Bias-corrected confidence interval.

p < .05. **p < .01.

Hypothesis 2 posited that gratitude mediates the link between positive contact and tourists’ ERB. As Table 5 shows, positive contact was positively related to gratitude (β = 0.43, p < .01), and gratitude was positively associated with tourists’ ERB (β = 0.29, p < .01). Meanwhile, the indirect effect was significant (β = 0.13, 95% CI [0.08, 0.18]). As Preacher and Selig (2012) suggest, such results prove that gratitude mediates the link between positive contact and tourists’ ERB, which supports Hypothesis 2.

Hypothesis 3 proposed that agreeableness moderates the relationship between positive contact and gratitude. The results showed that the interaction term between positive contact and agreeableness was positively related to gratitude (β = 0.25, p < .01), with the 95% CI excluding zero (0.14, 0.35). Following Aiken and West’s (1991) advice, we conducted a simple slope analysis and plotted the pattern of the moderating effect at one standard deviation above and below the mean (see Figure 2). The positive relationship between positive contact and gratitude was stronger when agreeableness was high (β = 0.61, p < .01) than it was when agreeableness was low (β = 0.25, p < .01). Thus, Hypothesis 3 is supported.

Figure 2.

Moderating effects of agreeableness on the relationship between positive contact and gratitude.

Hypothesis 4 predicted that agreeableness moderates the mediating effect of positive contact on tourists’ ERB through gratitude, so that the indirect effect is stronger among tourists with high agreeableness. As seen in Table 5, for highly agreeable tourists, ERB increased as the mediated effect of positive contact increased (β = 0.18, 95% CI [0.12, 0.25]). However, when tourists had low agreeableness, the positive relationship between the mediated effect of positive contact and tourists’ ERB was weaker (β = 0.07, 95% CI [0.04, 0.12]). Moreover, the index of moderated mediation was statistically significant (β = 0.07, 95% CI [0.04, 0.11]). Thus, the indirect effect of positive contact on tourists’ ERB was significantly more positive at high levels of agreeableness, which is consistent with Hypothesis 4.

Discussion and Conclusion

To explore whether positive contact can stimulate tourists’ ERB, we proposed a moderated mediation model based on SET. We tested this model using a large data sample, exploring positive contact as the independent variable, gratitude as the mediating mechanism, and tourists’ ERB as an outcome. The study also considered agreeableness as a boundary condition for the relationship between positive contact and gratitude. The results revealed that positive contact can stimulate tourists’ ERB and that the link between positive contact and tourists’ ERB is mediated by gratitude. Furthermore, the results also confirmed that highly agreeable tourists are more likely to feel gratitude in response to positive contact. In addition, We also found that agreeableness moderates the indirect relationship between positive contact and tourists’ ERB through gratitude.

Interpreting these findings, one can surmise that residents’ positive contact is a crucial predictor of tourists’ ERB. Both tourists’ ERB and residents-tourists interaction have always been two hot topics in tourism. However, the link between positive contact and ERB have previously gotten scant consideration in the field of residents-tourists interaction and have generally been ignored by the researchers of tourists’ ERB. Especially, past literature on tourists’ ERB has mainly concentrated on its antecedents at the individual and destination levels (e.g., Lin and Lee 2020; Su and Swanson 2017), paying less attention to the impact of residents-tourists interaction. A study by Wang et al. (2018) suggested that host’s efforts can promote tourists’ green behavior, but that the relationship between positive contact on tourists’ ERB and its mechanism have not been empirically supported. Through empirical analysis, this study finds that positive contact is one of the determining factors triggering tourists’ ERB, which complements the tourists’ ERB literature. Not only that, previous studies on the effect of residents-tourists contact on tourists’ psychological behavior mainly focused on contact quality (e.g., Meng and Han 2018), contact quantity (or frequency) (e.g., Aleshinloye et al. 2020), contact activities (e.g., Chen and Rahman 2018), contact attitudes (e.g., Joo et al. 2019), and so on. However, they seldom discussed the experiential valence (positive or negative) of intergroup contact and its effect (Tse and Tung 2021). Based on the existing research on intergroup contact valence (e.g., Bagci et al. 2020; Rupar and Graf 2019; Tse and Tung, 2021), this study considers positive contact in tourism domain, thus, extending the research on residents-tourists contact.

Findings of this study also indicate that gratitude is an effective path linking positive contact and tourists’ ERB. In particular, positive contact is a determining factor of tourist gratitude, which is instrumental in further promoting tourists’ ERB. Referring to the previous literature on resident-tourist contact and interaction, it seems that there are two equally viable paths: personal connections (Nam et al. 2016) and memorable tourism experience (Chen and Rahman 2018). However, the transmitting effect of both personal connections and memorable tourism experience on the link between residents-tourists interaction and tourist behavior primarily concentrated on the process of static response to a social phenomenon, lacking solid theoretical foundations in the construction of conceptual models. Our study provides evidence for claims that residents-tourists contact can indeed have an effect on tourists behavior (Chen and Rahman 2018; Nam et al. 2016) and extends the understanding about how such a relation works in light of SET. Specifically, our findings are in line with SET and provide evidence for the following viewpoints: (1) positive contact serves as a set of socio-emotional resources pushing forward the social exchange relationships; (2) gratitude that represents high-quality social exchange relationships is a response to socio-emotional resources; and (3) tourists’ ERB, a kind of reciprocal behavior, is the outcome of gratitude. Moreover, these conclusions are consist with the findings reported in tourism that gratitude can be induced by the receipt of a benefit and motivates reciprocal behavior (Filep et al. 2017; Gong et al. 2020; Jin et al. 2018). Additionally, Palmatier et al. (2009) introduced customer gratitude to better understand the relationship quality between companies and customers. As a relationship-based construct, gratitude has always been found to mediate the effect of perceptions on behaviors in relationship marketing literature (e.g., Fazal-e-Hasan et al. 2017; Hasan et al. 2017; Jin et al. 2018; Palmatier et al. 2009). This study extends prior findings by regarding tourist gratitude as a high-quality relational construct in residents-tourists interaction. The result indicates that gratitude partially mediates the link between positive contact and tourists’ ERB, which provides further understanding of the importance of tourist gratitude in predicting ERB.

Our results support the importance of examining agreeableness in the process of social exchange between residents and tourists. Despite an increasing attention on agreeable personality traits in tourism (e.g., Juric et al. 2021; Kvasova 2015; Moghavvemi et al. 2017), researchers have typically not considered its impact on residents-tourists relationship. Especially, prior tourism literature mostly focused on the main effects of agreeableness, paying less attention to its moderating role. For example, Kvasova (2015) revealed agreeable personality traits can positively promote eco-friendly tourist behavior. Unlike the previous studies, our findings reveal that the effect of positive contact on gratitude was stronger for tourists with high agreeableness. Agreeableness also strengthened the indirect relationship between positive contact and tourists’ ERB through gratitude. Hence, agreeableness plays an important role in improving the residents-tourists relationship. Furthermore, agreeableness that affects the formation of high-quality social exchange relationships, moderates the relationship between positive contact and gratitude. According to SET, the formation of high-quality social exchange relationships may be affected by the characteristics of the exchange partner (Dirks and Skarlicki 2009; Mitchell et al. 2012). This study further extends the application range of SET by incorporating agreeableness into the social exchange model. Overall, we identified an important boundary condition of positive contact, which widens the scope of resident-tourist contact research and enriches the connotation of SET.

Theoretical Implications

This study offers several theoretical implications. First, it extends the resource category of social exchange in resident-tourist research, from economic resources to socio-emotional resources. The majority of previous research that has used SET to explore the residents-tourists relationship has focused on the exchange of economic resources (e.g., Chang 2021; Kang and Lee 2018; Nunkoo and So 2015; Rasoolimanesh et al. 2015; Shakeela and Weaver 2018), neglecting the exchange of socio-emotional resources. Not only that, most of studies, using SET to explain residents-tourists interaction, ignore the emotional factors in this theory. Based on the SET literature (Blau 1964; Lawler 2001), this study not only fully investigates the exchange of socio-emotional resources but also confirms the significant role of emotion in social exchange. Hence, the study provides an example of how to incorporate emotion into SET, thus promoting the application of SET in the field of residents-tourists contact.

Second, this study advances the residents–tourists contact literature by shedding light on the mediating mechanism underlying the link between positive contact and tourists’ ERB. Previous studies (e.g., Wang et al. 2018) investigated only the link between local residents’ efforts and tourists’ green behavior and failed to explore the direct impact of positive contact on tourists’ ERB. In particular, the psychological mechanism by which positive contact stimulates tourists’ ERB has received little attention. Heeding the call for an exploration of residents–tourists contact using empirical research (Fan et al. 2017b; Lin et al. 2019), our study investigated how positive contact stimulates tourists’ ERB. Specifically, we proved that gratitude is an important transmitting mechanism of positive contact that triggers tourists’ ERB. Considering the lack of research on gratitude in residents-tourists interaction studies (Filep et al. 2017), our conclusion provides a new perspective by which to understand the relationship between residents and tourists. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to empirically investigate the role of tourist gratitude in residents–tourists interactions. Additionally, in view of the fact that there is insufficient study on moderating role of tourists agreeableness, the present study addressed this gap by exploring the moderating effect of tourist agreeableness on the link between residents–tourists contact and tourist gratitude, offering a powerful supplement to the existing research.

Finally, the study’s research model, constructed using SET, provides a theoretical framework for testing and discussing similar variables in the domain of residents-tourists interaction. In this study, the model comprises only four constructs (resource, relationship quality, reciprocity, and characteristics of the exchange partner). The theoretical framework proposed in this study can be used to discuss similar variables in other studies. For example, emotional solidarity reflects residents’ attitudes toward tourists, such as their welcoming nature, emotional closeness, and sympathetic understanding (Woosnam and Norman 2010), and may be viewed as a kind of socio-emotional resource. Likewise, for the relationship quality construct, trust, satisfaction, and commitment also represent high-quality social exchange relationships (Blau 1964; Palmatier et al. 2009) and can be incorporated into the model in future studies. In addition, this study ignored the potential effect of positive contact on tourists’ post-travel behavior, such as tourist loyalty (Stylos and Bellou 2019), recommendation intention, and word of mouth (Tu et al. 2020). Research on whether such behaviors constitute a reciprocal response to positive contact would be worth exploring.

Managerial Implications

In addition to its theoretical implications, this study has several practical implications. First, previous studies imply that residents’ positive contact plays a crucial role in triggering both post-travel behavioral intentions and green behavior (Chen and Rahman 2018; Nam et al. 2016; Wang et al. 2018). Our empirical findings confirm that positive contact can arouse tourists’ ERB. This means that strengthening positive contact experiences for tourists may enhance intergroup relationships and promote reciprocal behavior. To this end, intervention measures that intensify tourists’ positive contact experience should be taken, such as inviting tourists to participate in local festivals and holding community activities involving residents–tourists interaction. Moreover, it is important for tourists to receive socio-emotional resources (e.g., supportiveness, helpfulness, friendliness) from residents. This can be achieved by offering help to and sharing the local culture with tourists, treating tourists fairly, and welcoming them.

Second, our findings emphasize the mediating role of gratitude between positive contact and tourists’ ERB. Local organizations and destination managers should make special efforts to advance high-quality relationships characterized by gratitude. Filep et al. (2017) underline the importance of social interaction in promoting gratitude. Tourist gratitude is closely related to the value of social capital, which means that the resources provided by residents should be consistent with tourists’ contact purposes (Filep et al. 2017; Lin et al. 2019). Hence, creating meaningful interactions and offering valuable communication that inspires tourists’ emotional responses is encouraged. According to Lin et al. (2019), tourists contact residents to obtain information or help or to engage in problem solving, experience sharing, or destination exploration. Thus, local organizations and destination managers should remind residents to integrate social interaction with tourists’ contact purposes and adopt more pro-social behavior. This approach can enhance tourists’ feelings of gratitude, and thus lead to more positive outcomes.

Third, the study finds that agreeableness accelerates the effect of positive contact on gratitude. As low agreeable tourists are likely to consider others to be dishonest and malicious (Costa et al. 1991), local organizations and destination managers should pay more attention to those with low level of agreeableness. Residents’ motives are a necessary precondition for tourist gratitude (Filep et al. 2017), which in turn depends on tourists’ interpretation of the motivations behind their behavior. To prevent cognitive or attribution bias among low agreeable tourists, two steps should be taken simultaneously: First, local organizations should cultivate the civic virtues of local residents and ensure that they interact with tourists sincerely and selflessly; second, destination managers should create a positive image of local residents through media publicity, adopting a proactive guidance strategy.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

Although our findings expand the existing knowledge on positive contact, the study’s potential limitations provide opportunities for future studies. First, the data regarding positive contact, gratitude, agreeableness, and ERB were procured from the same source; thus, common method bias is a concern, although we adopted a multi-wave data collection approach over five distinct periods of time. According to Evans’ (1985) assertions, the existence of interaction effects argues against method effects, which increases our confidence in the study’s findings. However, to further reduce the potential impact of common method bias, the variables should be measured separately in future research.

Second, under the influence of collective values in China (Hui 1988), the study’s findings are consistent with the theory and our expectations. However, residents–tourists contact is a cross-cultural phenomenon (e.g., Chen and Rahman 2018; Fan et al. 2017b; Gnoth and Zins 2013), which means that group culture plays an important role in promoting intergroup relationships (Verkuyten and Yogeeswaran 2020). Thus, it is unclear whether the conclusions of this study are applicable to other cultural contexts. Further exploration of tourists’ responses to positive contact should be conducted for other nations, especially individualistic countries.

Finally, this study has reached some conclusions based on the data collected before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, COVID-19 pandemic produced significant changes on the psychology of tourists and residents (Assaf et al. 2021; Tse and Tung 2021). First, consumers’ risk perceptions and health awareness are higher (Ribeiro et al. 2021). For safety’s sake, tourists are likely to avoid contact with residents. Residents’ positive contact will no longer be regarded as a socio-emotional resource and interpreted as goodwill, which will lead to negative emotions (e.g., fear, anxiety) rather than gratitude. Second, residents’ willingness to have positive contact with out-groups will likely be reduced (Tse and Tung, 2021). Positive contact thus becomes a more valuable socio-emotional resource for tourists, making it easier to induce their gratitude, as residents need to take risks to help them. Overall, there is no clear direction for the stimulating effect of residents’ positive contact with tourists during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, scholars should not only further verify the link between positive contact and tourist gratitude but also introduce a new moderator to explore the boundary effect of positive contact on tourist gratitude.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the reviewers for their careful reading and providing some pertinent suggestions.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

HongWei Tu

Author Biographies

HongWei Tu, PhD, is an associate professor of marketing at College of Tourism, FuJian Normal University, China. His main research interests lies at the intersection of marketing and tourism, focusing on tourist behavior. His academic work is primarily grounded in survey research methods and multivariate modeling techniques.

JianFeng Ma, PhD, is an associate professor of marketing at School of management, Lanzhou University, China. His research interests relate to place experiences and emotional aspects of consumption.

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