Author Identifier
Songshan Huang: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4990-2788
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Journal of Travel Research
Publisher
Sage
School
School of Business and Law
Funders
National Natural Science Foundation of China (72174213, 72202061) / Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities of the Central South University (2024ZZTS0311) / Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (22YJCZH050) / Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2024JJ3034)
Abstract
Tourist activities may harm the environment, making tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior particularly important in tourism research. This research investigates the persuasion effect of message framing in environmental protection reminders on environmentally responsible behavior. Through five studies employing both field and controlled experiments and different measures of environmentally responsible behavior across varied tourism scenarios, we demonstrate that negatively (vs. positively) framed messages more effectively increase environmentally responsible behavior. Specifically, negatively framed messages are more effective in enhancing tourists’ environmental awareness, which triggers more environmentally responsible behavior. Furthermore, we identify social class as a moderator of message framing effectiveness, showing that negatively framed messages are more persuasive for lower-class tourists, whereas positively framed messages are more persuasive for upper-class tourists. These findings advance knowledge on message framing and tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior, reconcile prior research, and offer practical guidance for destinations to encourage environmentally responsible behavior among tourists.
DOI
10.1177/00472875241289571
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Comments
This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript version of an article published by SAGE in Journal of Travel Research. The published article is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/00472875241289571
He, X., Ye, C., Huang, S., & Su, L. (2024). The “green persuasion effect” of negative messages: How and when message framing influences tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior. Journal of Travel Research. Advance online publication. Copyright © 2024 (SAGE). DOI: 10.1177/00472875241289571