Is this about Feeling? The Interplay of Emotional Wellbeing, Solidarity and Residents’ Attitude.

Research has neglected to explore the role that residents’ feelings toward tourists play in influencing residents’ emotional wellbeing and residents’ attitude about tourism. This study proposes a theoretical model integrating emotional solidarity, emotional wellbeing and residents’ attitude. In order to test the proposed model, a survey of residents in China was undertaken. Structural equation modeling and mediation analysis were applied to assess the relationships involving residents’ emotional solidarity with tourists, emotional wellbeing, and residents’ attitude. The three dimensions of emotional solidarity were considered in the study: 1) welcoming nature, 2) sympathetic understanding, and 3) emotional closeness. Results indicate that welcoming nature, sympathetic understanding and emotional closeness directly influence residents’ attitude and residents’ emotional wellbeing. In addition, the relationships involving residents’ welcoming nature, sympathetic understanding and emotional closeness with tourists and residents’ attitude were all mediated by emotional wellbeing. Theoretical and practical implications as well as future research opportunities are provided

THREE ESSAYS ON THE DESTINATION PERFORMANCE MEASURES AND OBJECTIVE QUALITY OF LIFE INDICATORS

Over the last two decades, the topic of quality of life (QoL) in tourism has gained momentum and generated a plethora of studies focusing on the effects of tourism on the QoL and wellbeing of visitors, local communities, and industry workers. Despite the rich literature concentrating on the probable antecedents of subjective QoL among important tourist stakeholders, there are a few studies that investigate the relationship between performance and objective QoL measures. In these three essays, the link between traditional performance measures, widely used to assess the performance of tourism destinations, and objective QoL indicators is explored. The first essay tests the reciprocal relationship between objective QoL indicators and traditional destination performance measures over time. The key purpose of the study is to assess the extent to which QoL and destination performance indicators share a common variance, implying that there is an overlap between the two. The study results suggest that there is a strong interaction between the two sets and thus, new measures of destination performance can be developed by incorporating QoL indicators. Essay 2 extends these findings and focuses on investigating the QoL drivers of tourism demand in addition to traditional explanatory variables such as income and price constraints. Essay 2 demonstrates that tourism demand is shaped by a wider set of QoL factors, that go beyond the traditional economic determinants. Specifically, a QoL index that encompasses education, health, and stability was confirmed to have a significant impact on both outbound and inbound tourism demand. The present research offers a novel conceptualization of tourism demand, suggesting a more comprehensive outlook, moving beyond a mere economic perspective. Finally, Essay 3 develops a tourism destination frontier that incorporates QoL indicators. Based on QoL and tourism related inputs and outputs, a frontier model is used to rank the performance of each destination in the dataset. The study compares between two models, one that incorporates QoL indicators and one that does not. The research findings show that in general, performance scores change when incorporating the QoL indicators, demonstrating further support for the novel, combined measures of tourism performance that include QoL indicators

Support for Tourism: Pursuing a Better Life and Social Justice

Residents’ support for tourism is a critical factor in the process of tourism development in the destination. Despite the growing importance of residents’ perceived justice in both practice and academic research, little attention has been paid to its application in the destination context. This study investigated how residents’ perceived justice interacts with their quality of life and support for tourism, drawing on the justice theory and Weber’s theory of formal and substantive rationality. Results from 412 surveyed residents from two rural destinations in China suggest that distributive, procedural, and interactional justice have a significant positive impact on both residents’ quality of life and their support for tourism. In addition, quality of life played a crucial indirect role between residents’ perceived justice and their support for tourism. Furthermore, the moderation effect of personal economic benefits on the relationship between perceived justice dimensions and support for tourism was confirmed

Measuring International Tourism Demand to the United States: System Theory Perspective

Identifying relevant factors that affect tourism demand is of utmost importance for destinations in planning future tourism development. Drawing on the system theory of quality of life and consumer demand theory, this study offers a novel conceptualization of tourism demand, that moves beyond a mere economic perspective. The Multilayer Perceptron Artificial Neural Network model is employed to examine the impact of diverse quality of life dimensions of both source and destination countries in predicting tourist arrivals to the United States. The findings suggest that along with traditional demand determinants (e.g. per capita income, relative exchange rate), objective quality of life indicators are significant predictors of tourism demand. The study concludes with theoretical and practical implications

Tourism development as a moderator between emotion and well-being

This study examines the interplay among residents’ emotional solidarity with visitors, tourism development level, and emotional well-being. This study revealed that level of tourism development moderates the indirect effect of residents’ emotional solidarity with visitors on their attitude toward tourism via emotional well-being. The findings further confirmed that the emotional solidarity between locals and visitors has a considerable and beneficial impact on their emotional well-being which in return effectively predict their attitudes toward tourism

From good soldiers to happy employees: Exploring the emotional and well-being outcomes of organizational citizenship behavior

Building upon conservation of resources theory and affective event theory, this study broadens the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) literature by investigating the effects of two forms of OCB on employees' positive emotion, perceived role overload, and quality of work-life (QWL). Based on data collected from 321 hotel employees in China, the study findings indicate that engaging in organizational citizenship behavior toward the organization (OCBO) generates positive emotions, consequently affecting employees' QWL. Similarly, performing organizational citizenship behavior toward individuals in the organization (OCBI) has a positive impact on employees' positive emotions. Moreover, the results reveal a negative relationship between OCBO, and employees perceived role overload, suggesting that employees may achieve resource acquisition and alleviate role overload through OCB. The study findings make valuable theoretical contributions and provide meaningful empirical implications for hospitality organizations