Support from the private sector, for example by firms, has been solicited to ease tourist attraction financial constraints and to help their restoration and maintenance out of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities (United Nations, 2010; Europanostra, 2013). When engaging in these partnerships, firms may display different level of altruistic motivation. For example, the Italian fashion company Tod’s demonstrated high altruism by agreeing to restore the Colosseum without any economic or financial return. American Express, however, sought promotional rights when the firm agreed to contribute to the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. Finally, the ticketing agency Eventim renamed the Hammersmith Apollo (now Eventim Apollo) in London following their involvement in the restoration, thus pursuing more strategic, rather than altruistic goals. Non-altruistic goals and the fear that the involvement of a company may generate scepticism in visitors, as they could perceive the authentic image of a tourist attraction to be jeopardized. Managers of tourist attractions are faced with a dilemma: should they seek financial support from third parties (e.g. firms), or would this compromise the appeal of the site, leading to a drop in the number of visitors? In order to address this problem, we conducted two experiments to examine how firms' involvement in restorations affects tourist attractions. We found that firms' altruistic motivations (that denotes the support of a cause without demanding anything in return) are positively associated with tourists' intentions to visit the attraction (Study 1). Moreover, we found that this relationship is mediated by visitors’ perceived authenticity, in other words the belief that the real aspect of the site has not been irreversibly altered. We confirm the robustness of our findings in Study 2, additionally showing how this effect is stronger in the case of heritage sites compared to non-heritage sites. To the best of our knowledge, our results are among the first to show how a lack of altruism in CSR activities can negatively affect the target of the campaign (in this particular case a tourist attraction). Results also suggest managers of tourist attractions with high heritage value to assess the altruistic motives of the firm carefully before engaging in a financial partnership.

• Alessandro Biraglia(Leeds University Business School, UK)
• Maximilian H. E. E. Gerrath(Leeds University Business School, UK)
• Bryan Usrey(Leeds University Business School, UK)