Researchers from School of Tourism of Huaqiao University (HQU) published online an article titled “The persuasive effects of warning messages” in Annals of Tourism Research, an internationally renowned journal.

Empirical investigations regarding tourists’ safety-related responses to warning messages in natural recreational leisure settings are scarce. To address this deficiency, through three online experiments with recreational scenarios, this paper reveals the stress response mechanism of tourists to warning messages. The research shows that warning messages sequentially mediated safety behavior (compliance and participation) through threat appraisal and problem-focused coping. Warning messages also affected safety compliance, but not safety participation, via the sequential mediation of threat appraisal and emotion-focused coping. In addition, this paper also clarifies the moderating effects of other tourists’ safety behavior in coping with warning messages. The study reinforces the understanding of the internal mechanism of tourists’ safety responses to warning messages and also provides a theoretical basis for scientific guidance and regulation of tourist safety behaviors.

Doctoral student Lai Feifei is the first author, and Prof. Xie Chaowu the corresponding author, with HQU as the first affiliation. Dr. Zhang Jiangchi and Dr. Huang Rui participated in research. The paper is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2024.103829

(Editor: Wei Linying)