Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) are facing the dilemma: on one hand, communicating branding messages effectively to target markets all over the world requires abundant resources, while stakeholders within the destination have different (sometimes even conflicting) interests in destination branding on the other. Specifically, residents of a tourism destination have great potential in helping the place by being involved in tourism development and destination branding, due to the development of information technology. To investigate how self-congruity influences residents’ evaluation on the place, as well as their voluntary WOM behaviours, this article proposes self-congruity as a key construct affecting residents’ place satisfaction and expectation, and further influencing residents’ place related behaviours, such as word-of-mouth (WOM). An empirical study was conducted in Ljubljana, Slovenia, with 309 questionnaire collected. Via a structural equation modelling analysis, this study finds that variation of self-congruity in the impacts on place satisfaction and expectation, as well as two types of WOM behaviours, namely one-to-one WOM and one-to-many WOM. This provides evidence to support the standpoint that different WOM are motivated by different factors via different psychological mechanisms. Specifically, (1) actual self-congruity and place satisfaction (reflecting an evaluation of past of current performance of the place) only affect one-to-one WOM, suggesting that this type of WOM is mainly motivated by one’s current state; (2) ideal self-congruity was found to affect place expectation, suggesting a consistency in the expectation of one’s self image and the place; (3) one-to-many WOM has two indicators of ideal self-congruity and place expectation, implying publishing one’s opinions and thoughts is driven by expectation rather than current state. In general, the results add detailed and in-depth findings on distinguishing the motivations of different types of WOM in WOM literature.

Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) are facing the dilemma: on one hand, communicating branding messages effectively to target markets all over the world requires abundant resources, while stakeholders within the destination have different (sometimes even conflicting) interests in destination branding on the other. Specifically, residents of a tourism destination have great potential in helping the place by being involved in tourism development and destination branding, due to the development of information technology. To investigate how self-congruity influences residents’ evaluation on the place, as well as their voluntary WOM behaviours, this article proposes self-congruity as a key construct affecting residents’ place satisfaction and expectation, and further influencing residents’ place related behaviours, such as word-of-mouth (WOM). An empirical study was conducted in Ljubljana, Slovenia, with 309 questionnaire collected. Via a structural equation modelling analysis, this study finds that variation of self-congruity in the impacts on place satisfaction and expectation, as well as two types of WOM behaviours, namely one-to-one WOM and one-to-many WOM. This provides evidence to support the standpoint that different WOM are motivated by different factors via different psychological mechanisms. Specifically, (1) actual selfcongruity and place satisfaction (reflecting an evaluation of past of current performance of the place) only affect one-to-one WOM, suggesting that this type of WOM is mainly motivated by one’s current state; (2) ideal self-congruity was found to affect place expectation, suggesting a consistency in the expectation of one’s self image and the place; (3) one-to-many WOM has two indicators of ideal self-congruity and place expectation, implying publishing one’s opinions and thoughts is driven by expectation rather than current state. In general, the results add detailed and in-depth findings on distinguishing the motivations of different types of WOM in WOM literature.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among the service quality, professional competence and loyalty of China tourists visiting Taiwan. A crosssectional survey was used to collect usable data from the China tourists who participate in group tourism to Taiwan. The result indicate that the China tourists felt the service quality of “meal” in Taiwan is the best and good feeling in “professional knowledge” of tour guide. In addition, this study found that the professional competence of tour guide has an intermediary effect between the quality of tourist services and tourist loyalty. The quality of tourism service can positively influence the loyalty of China tourists to Taiwan, meanwhile, the quality of tourism service can positively affect the professional competence of tour guide and the professional competence of tour guide can positively affect the loyalty of China tourists travel to Taiwan. According to the results, the study found that travel agencies should focus on the training of tour guide, which help travel agencies to raise the value of travels product and attract more tourist.

This research was conducted with the aim to reveal the influence of online travel communities on tourism destinations choice, with the focus on the Russian tourism market. The preliminary results indicated that social media has significant influence on consumer behaviour and decision-making process of Russian travellers. Still, there is additional activity of Russian tourist market actors is needed to more fully use the opportunities of online travel communities.

“If you‟re ever found yourself wondering what to do during an annoyingly long layover (hi, hello, all of us), „get Botox‟ will soon join your list of possibilities – at least if you‟re traveling in South Korea”(MacKenzie, 2017). Introduction Cosmetic surgery has become a new attraction for Chinese tourists to visit Korea. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Korea, 27,646 of 127,648 Chinese medical tourists who visited Korea in 2016 did so to obtain cosmetic surgery (Nam, 2017). This paper presents how external desire influenced the socio-historical development of the cosmetic surgery tourism in South Korea, focusing on Chinese crossborder consumption. In analyzing this relatively new phenomenon, we identified two intertwined desires. Specifically, while popularity of cosmetic surgery in South Korea is driven by the desire of individual Chinese consumers to obtain symbolic capital by achieving so-called K-beauty, this directly supports the collective desire of the Korean nation to construct a new Korean-ness. This trend has led to the promotion of Medical Korea, aiming to erase the former image of uncool industrial emerging country. In examining these complex practices, we employed the conception of “nation-ness” (Taylor, 1997) to elucidate the renewal of Korean national identity in the medical tourism industry and the global marketplace (Anderson, 1991; Appadurai, 1996; Lee, 2017). This paper commences with a brief outline of the socio-historical development of cosmetic surgery in Asian societies. We then discuss the connection of beauty and social capital among the Chinese consumer society and how Korean‟s cosmetic surgery industry has become the icon site for the achieving the ideal beauty. The paper closes with an illustration of the inter-relationship between the emerging consumer desire for beauty and the reconstruction of Korean-ness. Cosmetic surgery in contemporary asian consumer society Drawing on Giddens‟s (1991) notion of reflexivity, Belk (1988) and other consumer researchers have revealed that consumers consider their body as their possession and a reflection of their self. Consequently, some see it as a resource for constructing their desired identity through cosmetic surgeries (Askegaard, Gertsen, & Langer, 2002; Schouten, 1991; Thompson & Hirschman, 1995). While this phenomenon has mostly been examined in the context of contemporary Western consumer society, it is increasingly becoming more widespread. Such practices have resulted in human body no longer being viewed as a biological entity, but rather as “the finest consumption object” that can be further refined if needed (Baudrillard, 2005, p. 129). Altering one‟s body has traditionally been considered a taboo in many Asian cultures. In ancient Chinese society, there was a general perception that our bodies, down to a single hair and a flake of skin, are given to us by our parents. Therefore, any modification to the way our body looks and functions would be considered disrespectful to one‟s parents (Hua, 2013). However, in the world of cable TV and mass-circulation of Hollywood movies, in which social media has become an indispensable part of everyday life for most individuals, it is not surprising that Western beauty ideals have emerged as a dominant reference for the rest of the world. As the Westernized values and lifestyles become more easily accessible through media, they challenge these former social norms. Consequently, Asian women are increasingly seeking body modifications, such as plastic surgery, in an attempt to attain the elusive ideal beauty. In her research on body alternations, Orbach (2011) reported that 50 percent of teenage girls in South Korea planned to alter their faces or bodies through plastic surgery. According to the available evidence, in 2011, South Korea was rated first in the world in terms of the per capita ratio of aesthetic plastic surgeries (Shin, 2011). The success of South Korea‟s plastic surgery industry then made the country one of the best site for body alternations in the global beauty marketplace. Chinese desire for new face: beauty as capital Although it directly counters old Confucian doctrine of not tampering with one‟s body for filial piety, cosmetics surgery is very popular in China. In her book Buying Beauty, Hua (2013) noted that the increasingly brutal competition for jobs has prompted Chinese women to regard beauty as capital. It is thus not uncommon for Chinese parents to finance their daughters‟ cosmetic surgery, as they have come to perceive a pretty face as a worthwhile long-term investment, as it may increase the future career and/or marriage prospects of their daughters. For this reason, Chinese women are undergoing cosmetic surgery at a much younger age than do their Western counterparts. “Being good-looking is capital” has become the epitome of Chinese young girls. They consider attractive appearance that a cosmetic surgery may proffer as a form of capital, which they believe can give them a competitive advantage in the increasingly fierce job market (Hua, 2013). This attitude is prevalent among women, as gender and appearance discrimination is widespread in Chinese job market even in occupations where outward appearance usually has no relevance, such as civil service and government institutions (Hua, 2013). Owing to the increasingly widespread access to popular and social media and TV as a result of China reopening its doors, Chinese beauty standards have changed, whereby the perception of ideal image is heavily influenced by Western movies, pop culture, and the fashion and beauty industry (Hua, 2013). As Luo‟s (2012) research demonstrated, however, these newly adopted Western beauty ideals are coming into conflict with those that have traditionally been held by the Chinese. Yet, as Li et al. (2007) have shown, not all recent changes to the perceptions of and attitudes toward external appearance can be attributed to the Western influence. In their cross-cultural study on skin-whitening practices in four Asian markets, the authors reported that the desire for “white skin” in many Asian cultures (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indian) has a long history. Saraswati (2010) concurred with this finding, stating that, in the non-Western context, the desire for “whiteness” cannot be equated to the desire for “Caucasian whiteness,” implying that the concept of whiteness may be context-dependent. This tension seems to be relieved by the adoption of Korean beauty ideal, which blends the Western and Korean physical traits and has resulted in Hallyu or the Korean Wave. Since the late 1990s, the term “Hallyu” has been used to describe the influx of South Korean popular culture in Asia. Korean TV dramas, movies, and popular music (K-pop) have in recent decades become staples in Asian markets formerly dominated by Japan and Hong Kong (Seabrook, 2012). Since the Korean Wave hit China, the visual appearance, fashion trends, hairstyle choices, and make-up styles of Korean stars have become highly popular. Consequently, many Chinese people regard Korea as the cosmetic surgery hub of Asia, as Korean beauty is admired by Chinese people who thus aspire to attain it by undergoing various surgical and non-surgical procedures. This growing trend was spurred by the success of the TV drama, Jewel in the Palace, which resulted in the popularity of the lead actress Lee Young Ae among Chinese women, who would ask plastic surgeons to make them look like her (Hua, 2013). The popularity of Korean pop culture and the widespread adoption of the Korean beauty ideals can be interpreted as counter-standard against the Western beauty. Yet, as Hua (2013) and others argue, the rise of Korean influence in the Asian markets can also be viewed as an indication of the submission to the Western beauty imperialism. This tension exists, as their Mongolian heredity with more prominent noses and lighter skins than other Asians gives Koreans certain “Western” features (Fairclough, 2005). The new face and desire for the new national identity Not long ago, Korea had the reputation as an emerging industrial nation that manufactures low-cost cars and appliances (Fairclough, 2005; Seabrook, 2012). South Korea has a long history and reputation as an industrial hub in East Asia. Some of the top global brands, such as Samsung, Hyundai, and LG, began as the key manufacturing partners of Western brands in the early and mid-twentieth century. Korea is also often associated with the Korean War, as described in US motion pictures, such as MASH (Preminger & Altman,1970). However, in the late 1990s, this image began to change with the increasing popularity of aforementioned Hallyu entertainment contents (Fairclough, 2005). In fact, the latest “Korean Wave” has ushered a brand-new transnational representation of Korea into the global marketplace. Following a highly successful cultural Hallyu, Korea has recently launched medical Hallyu, promoting cosmetic surgery (Eun, 2013). In the 2000s, Korean cosmetic surgery emerged as a successful byproduct of the Korean Wave. This growing trend has since become a source of great national pride in South Korea (Holliday, Bell, Cheung, Jones, & Probyn, 2015). While Korean entertainment products were generating enormous revenues, cosmetic surgery was recognized as a profitable addition to the already lucrative export industry, as foreign tourists were willing to travel to the country in order to undergo operations that would make them look like Korean Hallyu stars. In recognition of this change in attitudes towards physical appearance and beauty ideals, “Korean cosmetic surgery” (Hanshi zhengxing) and “Korean-style beauty” (Hanshi meirong) became key words in the cosmetic surgery advertisements in China (Davies & Han, 2011). Cosmetic surgery clinics in the trendiest Gangnam and Apgujeong districts of Seoul often provide medical tourism packages targeting foreign tourists coming from China and other Southeast Asian countries (Eun, 2013). As Hallyu boasts a creative integration of the Western and Korean elements in its entertainment contents (Shim, 2006), Korean cosmetic surgeons are attempting to achieve the same. According to a doctor that took part in Shim‟s (2009) study, Korean surgeons have the best skills to operate on Asian patients, as they have smaller physique and denser subcutaneous tissues compared to their Western counterparts. Although Korean surgeons used to travel to the U.S. to obtain training for the popular procedures, such as eyelid surgery, they subsequently modified the American techniques, realizing that they were inappropriate for the “Korean Body.” For instance, removing too much fat from the eyelids created an unnatural Western eyes that were not suitable for Korean facial structure. Such specialism, which is now internationally recognized, makes aspirant youths from neighboring China and Korean diaspora more than willing to travel to Korea to undergo elective cosmetic procedures that would improve their visual appearance (Holliday, Bell, Cheung, Jones, & Probyn, 2015). The Korean government‟s active support for the export of cultural products has also helped the proliferation of cosmetic surgery tourism. In 2009, the Korean National Assembly passed an amendment to the medical law, enabling hospitals to advertise their services and promote medical tourism (Eun, 2013). Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), a subsidiary organization of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, runs an online medical tourism platform website, visitmedicalkorea.com, to provide foreign tourists with information about Korean medical tourism. It also supports the overseas marketing of companies and hospitals as a means of attracting more tourists to the country (Korea Tourism Organization, n.d.). While the KTO website is not solely dedicated to cosmetic surgery tourism, Visit Medical Korea‟s website boasts the massive number of cosmetic surgery operations performed every year in Korea. The country is now the third largest cosmetic surgery market after the U.S. and Brazil, as the recognition of the high skill level of Korean surgeons and their use of modern technology motivates many individuals to visit Korea for their beauty enhancement (Korea Tourism Organization and Korea Health Industry Development Institute, n.d.). The fact that Korea has achieved economic progress through rapid modernization but did not give up many of its traditions is another allure to many Asian tourists (Fairclough, 2005). This is emphasized in the promotional video published by KTO through the juxtaposition of the beauty of traditional porcelain making inherited from Joseon dynasty with cutting edge medical technology and skills of Korean medical industry (Korea Tourism Organization, 2016). Conclusion: renewing “Korean-ness” in the global marketplace Desire to be beautiful and prolong one‟s youth is not unique to modern times. Yet, medical advances now make even extending one‟s height by breaking and separating the thigh bone to prompt growth possible. While this sounds scary and can be highly dangerous, it is a very popular operation in Shanghai. Cosmetic surgery is no doubt a popular service high on many Chinese consumers‟ list. Although it may be cynical to say that our desire for beautiful body is perpetuated and exploited by the style industries, it is true that the beauty, cosmetic, fashion, media, and celebrity industries are playing an important role in shaping our beauty standards and promoting the ideal body size/shape in the contemporary marketplace (Orbach, 2011). In this study, we connected Chinese consumers‟ desire for new facial features with the emerging plastic surgery tourism in South Korea as an exemplar of the reconstruction of national identity. The term “nation-ness” is comprehensive and links disparate phenomena, such as nation, nationalism, and nationality by including “everything from the bureaucratic fact of citizenship to the nationalist‟s mythical construction of nation as an eternal entity” (Taylor, 1997, p. 277). In this study, we argued that cosmetic surgery has become a new Korean national identity, which is not solely reflected in the rise of Korean beauty and style in the Pan-Asian (Cayla & Eckhardt, 2008) or even global marketplace. The new identity has also inherited the techno-industrial past, as the preciseness and high quality of Korean “industry” are valuable traits to transfer to this new medical field. In this paper, we demonstrated that the creation and promotion of ideal beauty and body is part of a broader political strategy, in which governments, corporations, and key cultural stakeholders are actively, and sometimes collectively, shaping and monitoring individuals‟ bodily practices.

The customer engagement construct has been widely investigated in the marketing literature since 2005. Scholars in hospitality and tourism have perceived the importance of this construct and tried to propose both conceptual framework (e.g., So, King, Sparks, & Wang, 2016) and measurement scale to capture this phenomena (e.g., So, King, & Sparks, 2014). However, there is no consensus in many issues such as conceptualization (Dijkmans, Kerkhof, & Beukeboom, 2015) and dimensionality (Romero, 2017). In addition, this construct is relatively new in hospitality and tourism. Hence, the direction for future research and what has been done in the past are indispensable for researchers since it reduces research fragmentations in the future. The study aim is to use existing works in hospitality and tourism literature with the systematic literature review to summarize facts and address the future research. SCOPUS and ISI were employed as the main databases to search and identify the relevant articles. A total of 19 out of 590 documents was identified and selected to analyze and classify based on types of research, country, and journal. In addition, the issues of theoretical background, conceptual framework, conceptualization, dimensionality, statistical analysis, key contributors are summarized respectively. Finally, this study addresses the scope of potential future research in a realm of hospitality and tourism.

This study tries to explain through a single model the number of tourist arrivals, using “the human development index” and “the political stability and absence of violence/terrorism index”, for a panel of Mediterranean countries. The sample is composed of seven countries in the Mediterranean region, namely: France, Spain, Italy, Egypt, Morocco, Croatia and Tunisia. In order to explain the attractiveness of tourism, Ritchie and Zins (1978) attached great importance to "social and cultural characteristics" and to "attitude towards tourists". These two attributes are intimately linked to the explanatory variables of our model. These explanatory variables also have common dimensions regarding the three following attributes: "hosting infrastructure", "destination culture and reception of the local population" and "security", Ritchie and Zins (1978), Kim (1998), Gallarza et al. (2002), Enright and Newton (2004), Cracolici and Nijkamp (2008) and Jin et al. (2012) consider them as strong attributes of tourist attractiveness. Our panel data model includes the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI) (2013). This index essentially takes into account the following dimensions: safety and security, health and hygiene, education, training and availability of skilled workers. These dimensions are fully reflected in the two explanatory variables of our model: the index of political stability and absence of violence / terrorism and the index of human development. However, our research is original in comparison with the World Economic Forum's (2013) Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI). Indeed, the econometric model of panel data, presents the advantage of simultaneously studying several countries over a period and using homogeneity and Hausman tests. It constitutes a practical tool to build a single model, valid for several countries and useful forecasting tourist flows. Validated on a statistical and econometric basis with a good predictive quality, our panel data model, i.e. the random effect model, shows that the political stability and absence of violence/terrorism and the human development indexes act positively on the number of tourist arrivals. Thus, it considers safety and security, health and hygiene, education, training and availability of skilled workers and standard of living, as strong attributes to explain the attractiveness of a country.

In today’s highly dynamic tourism and hospitality environment, the role of customer engagement (CE) in customer experience and value is receiving increasing attention from practitioners and academics (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, 2017). Despite this interest, scholarly analysis into the concept and its associated elements has been limited to date. For these reasons, the objective of this study is to present a science mapping approach to analysing the thematic evolution of customer engagement, specifically in the tourism/hospitality and marketing industries. The study applies a bibliometric approach combining co-citation analysis with co-word analysis to reveal and visualize the evolution of customer engagement in the hospitality and tourism areas. Specifically, authors use the SciMat software in order to discover the most important research themes and its conceptual evolution. This technique returns a set of clusters, which can be understood as conglomerates of different scientific aspects. They allow researchers the analysis of the research topics’ dynamic evolution by measuring continuance across consecutive sub-periods. Authors followed the ranking of hospitality and tourism journals considered by Gursoy and Sandstrom (2016) and, the marketing journal ranking developed by Hunt Reimann and Schilke (2009) as criteria for journal selection process. This study has considered the Web of Science (WoS) as the main academic database for collecting research contributions. Findings indicate symptoms of a research field in constant evolution that has not yet reached a stage of maturity. Initially, customer engagement was seen as an important element, but its examination was scarce and has gradually come to be recognized as a key goal within organizations to serve as a basis for the development of various study models. The results obtained from this study will enable future authors studying customer engagement to focus their studies more effectively.

Introduction Customer co-creation – customers‘ active participation and interaction with the company during their consumption processes, has gained increasing attention in tourism industry (Bertella, 2014; Chathoth et al., 2016; Campos, 2015). For example, Finnair and Helsinki airport invited passengers to workshop for co-developing new service concepts to improve passenger experience (Loukas, 2013). Despite of the increasing enthusiasm at the firm‘s side, customers do not necessarily share the mindset and feel ready for cocreation. The success of value co-creation greatly depends on continuous collaboration between customers and companies (Chathoth et al., 2013), making knowledge regarding customers‘ engagement in value co-creation essential. However, insufficient research attention has been devoted to theorize and empirically investigate the drivers of cocreation behavior in tourism (Grissemann & Stokburger-Sauer, 2012). To address this research gap, we draw on the organizational socialization theory (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979) to propose and empirically test customer education as driving factor for tourists‘ co-creation behavior during their tours. Additionally, we propose customer readiness as a mechanism mediating the effect of customer education on value co-creation behavior, while such effect should depend on tourists‘ involvement with tourism. Background and hypotheses development Organizational socialization refers to the process by which a newcomer gradually absorbs values, abilities, expected behaviors, and necessary social knowledge for assuming an organizational role and for participating as an organizational member (Louis, 1980, p. 229–230). Similar to the organizational socialization perspective, customer socialization characterizes how customers develop skills, knowledge, and attitude relevant to the marketplace (Ward, 1975), which offers a lens to explain how service providers can assist customers and behave as effective co-creators in the service system (Claycomb, Lengnick-Hall, and Inks, 2001). Büttgen et al (2012) demonstrated that customer socialization by training tactic has more important influence on consistent beliefs of service quality than prior reinforcement experiences, which engenders co-production motivation, in turn, leading to coproduction behavior as distal outcome of the socialization tactic. Previous studies suggest favorable customer outcomes to derive from the provision of customer education (Damali et al., 2016). Thus, this study proposed customer education as a socializing tactic, which is mediated by customer readiness for co-creation, to determine tourists co-creation behavior. The concept of co-creation has gained increasing attention in tourism literature, which is often described as the tourist‘s active participation, engagement and interaction during the consumption experience (e.g., Bertella, 2014; So et al., 2014). As Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004, p. 8) stated, cocreation is ―the joint creation of value by the company and the customer, allowing the customer to co-construct the service experience to suit her context‖. Indeed, creating a favorable, memorable experience involves not only the service providers but also the tourism customers because customers are always the value co-creator (Vargo and Lusch, 2004). Challagalla and colleagues (2009) posit that firms can reach out to contact the customers to provide service after a sale is complete, rather than respond upon the customer‘s requests. In specific, Challagalla and et al. (2009) suggest the proactive service initiatives to consist of three dimensions, namely proactive prevention, proactive education, and proactive feedback seeking. In this study, the three key forms of proactive post-sales services proposed by Challagalla et al. (2009) provides a foundation that helps us to conceive customer co-creation behavior and define the dimensions underlying customer co-creation behavior of tourism services. Customer education, according to Meer (1984), involves learning activities that are organized and sustained by a firm to impart attitudes, knowledge or skills to customers or potential customers. Meanwhile, customer co-creation readiness (CCR) as a customer‘s condition or state in which he/she feels prepared to collaborate with service provider in value co-creation behavior, indicated by role clarity, ability and motivation to co-create (Meuter et al., 2005). Proper socialization process helps customers understand the product or service process as well as their role in performing service tasks, which not only could prevent customer‘s disruptive behaviors during the service process but also facilitate service flow and productivity (Rollag, 2012). Taken together, we propose the following hypotheses: H1: customer education will have a positive effect on customer co-creation behavior H2: Customer co-creation readiness will mediate the positive effect of customer education on customer co-creation behavior. Further, we postulate that tourist‘s product involvement is a boundary condition that constrains the positive effect of customer socialization. Socialization process does not always have much weight on tourists because the influence of socialization on each individual depends on tourists‘ individual characteristics (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979). Some tourists are highly interested in traveling whereas some consider traveling as a dessert in their meal. In line of this sense, we suggest the following hypothesis: H3: Product involvement will negatively moderate the mediation effect of customer co-creation readiness on co-creation behavior. Methodology The survey was posted on several well-known travel forums and referral networks. After eliminating invalid surveys, the authors obtain 300 valid questionnaires. Table 1 presents the sample characteristics. Customer education are measured by four items adapted from Bell and Eisingerich (2007). Product involvement depicts a customer‘s inherent needs, values, and interest towards tourism and is measured by ten items from Zaichkowsky (1985, 1994). Customer co-creation readiness is measured as a reflective first-order and reflective second-order construct by three dimensions: role clarity, ability, and motivation with 12 items adapted by Dellande et al. (2004) and Meuter et al. (2005). Customer co-creation behavior is measured as a reflective second order and reflective first order construct constituted by three dimensions of co-creation behavior with 12 items developed based on the review of concerns in the pre-site, on-site and post-site from several famous travel agencies. Results Measurement validation of constructs from construct reliability, convergent validity to discriminant validity were examined; and the results are provided in the table 2, indicating measurement validation requirements are satisfactory. Then, hypotheses testing was performed. In each analysis, we control variables, including customer gender, previous transaction experience with the travel agency (EP), and social desirability (SD), which are expected to have potential influence on co-creation behavior. H1 predicts a positive relationship between customer education and value co-creation. In support of H1, the analysis shows that customer education positively relates to co-creation of customers (β = 0.272, p = 0.043, R2adjusted= 0.292). Gender (β =-0.170, p<0.001) and SD (β =0.141, p=0.011) are negatively and positively related to customer co-creation behavior respectively. To test the mediating effect of customer readiness on the relationship between customer education and customer co-creation behavior, we used the PROCESS Macro (model 4) developed by Hayes‘s (2013) and estimated the effects with a bootstrap sample of 5000 cases. The indirect effect test indicates that customer education had a significantly positive effect on customer co-creation via the mediation of customer readiness for co-creation (0.312; 95% bootstrap CI [0.157, 0.517]) because the confidence interval did not include zero. The results support H2. Gender also has a significant effect on customer co-creation (β =-0.189, p <0.05). H3 postulated that product involvement will moderate the mediation effect of customer readiness. We used the PROCESS macro model 8 established by Hayes (2013) to test the moderated mediation. The conditional indirect effect test shows that customer readiness significantly mediates the influence of customer education on customer co-creation behavior, regardless of the level of product involvement (zero was not included in the confidence intervals). Nonetheless, customer education on customer co-creation behavior via customer readiness is significant and stronger in low level of product involvement (0.281; 95% bootstrap CI [0.186, 0.398]) but weaker in high level of product involvement (0.128; 95% bootstrap CI [0.029, 0.256]). Therefore, H3 is supported. Among the controlled variables, gender is the only significant predictor of customer co-creation behavior (β =-0.158, p<0.05). In a summary of dominant results of control variables, gender is significant in all three of the tested hypotheses; particularly, female shows a higher level of co-creation behavior than male. Conclusion we introduced organizational socialization theory to the literature on co-creation of tourism context and explored the effect of firms‘ education effort to socialize customers in co-creation activities. We found customer education as a socialization tactic and then conducting an empirical study by collecting data from several travel agencies to investigate the effect of firms‘ socialization tactic on customer co-creation. The results suggest that customer education could promote customer co-creation through customer readiness as a mediator. We also investigated whether the effect of socialization tactic differs on the different levels of product involvement. The results show that customers with high involvement were less influenced by customer education than those with low involvement.

Traditionally, tourists spend their holidays in tourist spaces that provide the needed infrastructure for their experiences (i.e., hotels, restaurants, sight-seeing spots). However, nowadays tourists often occupy more residential space than in the past; this development is fuelled at least by two important trends in tourism. First, destination marketing organizations (DMO’s) increasingly seek to intertwine tourists‘ paths with local neighbourhood in order to create perceived tourist authenticity (e.g. the ‘localhood’ strategy of various city tourism organizations; Wonderful Copenhagen, 2017). Second, shared economy offerings, such as Airbnb, create tourist spaces in residential areas (Gutierrez et al., 2017). Both developments result in the integration of tourists into the residents’ living sphere, and anecdotal evidence indicates that this does not come without fraction between residents and tourists (e.g., Andereck et al., 2005; Gutierrez et al., 2017; Yang et al., 2013). Specifically, residential infrastructure as well as residents’ cultural identity may be impaired by tourism that digs its way through residential areas (Yang et al., 2013). As a consequence, residents often perceive urban tourism in their neighbourhood as ‘overtourism’ and a threat to their group, overall leading to low support for tourism development and negative attitudes towards tourists. This might negatively influence the tourism of the place, since the friendliness and hospitality of the local people are an important factor of the touristic experience (Kim, 2014). While the two mentioned developments of DMO’s ‘localhood’ strategy and Airbnb are likely to further fuel this trend, surprisingly little is still known about the perceptions of both tourists and residents, and the consequences for tourism performance. Against this background, the present research sets out to investigate the potential dilemma between the localized (and allegedly authentic; Lu, Chi and Liu 2015) tourist experience and the effect on residents‘ predispositions towards tourists and tourism itself. An initial question this research aims to answer is whether tourists indeed prefer and seek the authentic experience of ‘localhood’. Examining the issue of tourists’ perceived authenticity is crucial because it is the underlying assumption of DMO’s ‘localhood’ strategy. Second, this research sets out to investigate both residents’ and tourists’ perceptions of this development, mapping out potential consequences in a structural equation modelling approach. Specifically, this study aims to understand what drives residents’ perceptions of ‘overtourism’ and how this in turn affects their predispositions towards incoming tourists and tourism itself. In a third step, the consequences of these predispositions on tourists’ experience in the residential tourist space are analysed.

This paper selects Xi'an and Suzhou as the research objects, uses the methods of questionnaire and situational simulated method to discuss the impact of tourists' perceived destination image and self-concept congruity on intention to visit, and the moderating effect of self-construal (independent / interdependent). The Study I found the following results: the tourists' perceived destination image and self-concept congruity as well as the self-concept congruity dimensions (actual self-concept congruity, ideal self-concept congruity, social self-concept congruity, ideal social self-concept congruity) have a significant positive effect on intention to visit; the impact of ideal self-concept congruity is greater than that of actual self-concept congruity; the impact of ideal social self-concept congruity is greater than that of social self-concept congruity; and the ideal self-concept congruity has strongest impact on intention to visit. The Study II found out that: self-construal has moderating effect on this impact; the higher the actual self-concept congruity perceived by the tourists of independent self-construal, the greater the intention to visit; the higher the social self-concept congruity perceived by the tourists of interdependent self-construal, the greater the intention to visit. The research conclusion has certain reference value for building of tourism destination image, understanding of the tourism decision-making of the tourists and formulation and implementation of marketing strategies of relevant departments and enterprises.

Since the late 1980s, information communication and technology (ICT) have reshaped the landscape of the tourism industry (Buhalis & Law, 2008). Thanks to the Web 2.0 technology, tourism practitioners have never been this close to their customers over social media platforms. According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), social media refers to “a group of Internet-based applications which build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (p. 61). In line with this definition, electronic social networks, user-generated content aggregators, as well as location-based applications are all typical social media platforms, across which enable customers to create, edit, and share content. The increasingly growing social media platforms have greatly facilitated implementations of customer engagement strategies for organizations. As a psychological state, customer engagement is featured by interactive customer experiences with an organization, which encourage psychological, emotional, and physical investment a customer has in the organization (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, 2017). In the tourism and hospitality context, customer engagement strategies are as critical in strengthening customer loyalty, trust, and brand evaluations (So, King, & Sparks, 2016). Useful insights have been gained relating to conceptualization and measurement scale of customer engagement, organizational and cultural obstacles to consumer engagement within hotel organizations (Chathoth et al., 2014), customer engagement in a social media context alongside the process of recognition (Cabiddu et al., 2014). Underlying the practical and theoretical significance of customer engagement lies the subjective nature of views on the social media platforms. Goh, Heng, and Lin (2014) recognized that engagement in social media brand communities positively lead to enhanced purchase expenditures through embedded information and persuasion. Quantitively, the persuasive effect of user generated information is at least 22 times more than that of marketer’s in terms of marginal effect. Although previous research has examined consequences of consumer engagement, there has been less attention paid to its causes. Meanwhile, as far as Brodie et al. (2011) were concerned, the persistency of consumer-brand engagement is contingent on an assessment of tangible and intangible costs against possible benefits such as product news and offers. Therefore, identification of these benefits can offer supplementary insights into current literature of consumer engagement. The current study utilizes the self-determination theory to uncover how engagement in social media activities is facilitated by consumers’ intrinsic motivators and what psychological benefits can consumer obtain from such engagement, as either psychological state or process (Brodie et al., 2011). Research subjects in this study are Chinese social media users. According to eMarketer’s (2017) estimated that more than 80 percent of Internet users in China (i.e., around 626 million people) accessed social networks regularly in 2017. The importance of tapping this massive market can never be overestimated.

Despite the increasing attention to customer engagement (CE) by practitioners and academics, extant studies have largely been restricted to conceptualized relationships without empirical testing (So, King, & Sparks, 2014). Drawing on social identity theory and social exchange theory, this study develops a research model delineating the relationship between customer identification (CI), CE and customer purchasing behaviors in virtual communities. The model was tested with structural equation modeling and survey data from 513 members of two virtual tourism communities. Results indicate that both customer-community identification and customer-customer identification (constituting two classifications of CI) have directly positive effect on customer engagement attitude, on which the duration of membership in a community has a moderating effect. Additionally, customer-customer identification influences customer engagement behavior directly and positively, of which customer engagement attitude is the psychological foundation. Finally, customer engagement attitude and customer engagement behavior will promote customers’ purchasing behaviors. The contribution of this paper is that CE has been empirically validated to compose of customer engagement attitude and customer engagement behavior these two separate variables, and CI is testified to be an antecedent rather than a dimension of CE, in line with the standpoints proposed by Algesheimer, Dholakia, and Herrmann (2005).Through the current investigation, empirical studies into the concept connotation and formation mechanism of CE are enriched, and the insight into customer behavior management and CE marketing is intensified.

Human beings are intrinsically social. How social interaction among tourists affect their experience remains under-represented. Drawing on S-O-R theory, social integration theory and social penetration theory, this study proposes and empirically tests a conceptual model that integrates self-disclosure, perceived cohesion, perceived intimacy, tourist engagement and tourist satisfaction with the experience. Also, the tie strength is theorized as a moderator in the relationship between self-disclosure and perceived cohesion as well as perceived intimacy. A field experiment was undertaken to collect data. The results from the structural analysis suggest that self-disclosure influences perceived cohesion and perceived intimacy, which in turn influence their engagement and satisfaction with tourism experience. Moreover, the initial tie strength has moderation effect on the relationship between self-disclosure and perceived cohesion as well as perceived intimacy. Overall, findings of this study contributes to the development of tourism experience research from the perspective of tourist-to-tourist interaction, and broadens the research on tourist engagement. Discussions and implications for tourism operators, limitations, and suggestions for future research are also provided.

The dual processes of cognition and affect impact consumers’ choice of sharing economy-based experiential tourism. Prior knowledge of sharing economy technologies and favourable attitude toward sharing economy impact consumers’ intention to adopt a peer-to-peer experiential tourist service. Data from 150 respondents and OLS and OLogit analyses supported the hypothesis.

Ever since the notion of a sharing economy was highlighted by Time Magazine as one of the ten ideas that will one day change the world, there has been a significant increase in scholarly attention dedicated to investigating the impact sharing economies will have on individuals, organizations and society as a whole. Particularly, sharing economy has revolutionized the landscape of the tourism industry through Airbnb (Fang, Ye, & Law, 2016). Academic research has focused on studying consumption practices and behaviors from a recipient perspective, but relatively little attention has been given to understand what impacts sharing economy has, from a sharer point of view (Fagerstrøm, Pawar, Sigurdsson, Foxall, & Yani-de-Soriano, 2017). Specifically, the existing literature has yet to explore in what ways and to what extent sharers are engaged with sharing economy platforms, and explore what consequences accrue from engaging in sharing economy activities. As a result, this paper seeks to fill this gap by proposing a framework drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), in conjunction with a tourism well-being perspective to examine how sharers’ perception of extrinsic rewards indirectly influences their well-being through the mediating role of engagement in tourism sharing economy activities. Data from Airbnb hosts in London were analyzed through PLS. The findings show that hosts’ engagement with Airbnb fully mediates the relationship between extrinsic rewards and their wellbeing. In other words, extrinsic rewards from using the sharing platform have a positive effect on sharers’ engagement in sharing economy activities (Tussyadiah & Pesonen, 2016; Guttentag, 2015). In turn, engagement in sharing economy activities has been found to have a positive effect on the sharers’ well-being (Kim, Uysal, & Sirgy, 2013; Ganju, Pavlou, & Banker, 2016). The paper has some important managerial implications.

Customers’ opinions on social network platforms are known to influence peer behaviour (Bai, 2011; Eirinaki, Pisal, & Singh, 2012). Customers are also known to be more engaged in sharing their experiences by writing online reviews and recommendations that may be useful to others (Cantallops & Salvi, 2014; Tang & Guo, 2015; Xu & Li, 2016). Actually, user-generated content (UGC) on social network platforms has emerged as an important source for understanding and managing consumers’ expectations, particularly using automated and semi-automated knowledge extraction techniques from text such as text mining and sentiment analysis (Zhang, Zeng, Li, Wang, & Zuo, 2009). This research analyses dimensions of online customer engagement and associated concepts in customers’ reviews through (i) a global sentiment analysis using positive, neutral and negative sentiments and (ii) a topic-sentiment analysis to capture latent topics in online reviews. Furthermore, it examines what influences customers to contribute their online reviews, beyond the features of each focal company or brand. The research methodology is based on a text mining approach, using the MeaningCloud tool. The study focuses on Yelp.com reviews and includes a random sample of 15,000 unique reviews of restaurants, hotels and nightlife entertainment in eleven cities in the USA. An innovative customer engagement dictionary is created, based on previously validated scales using known dimensions of engagement, experience, emotions and brand advocacy, and extended using WordNet 2.1 lexical database. The research findings reveal a high impact of the engagement cognitive processing dimension and hedonic experience on customers’ review endeavour. The study results further indicate that customers seem to be more engaged in positively advocating a company/brand than the contrary. The findings will help social network managers to reinforce their platforms.

This study discusses how firm-customer interactions impact customer engagement behaviors in the area of hospitality and tourism services. In the current study, two research questions are raised to answer: 1) what values are perceived by customers through firm-customer interactions during various service encounters? 2) how customer engagement behaviors are led by the customer perceived values? To test the proposed model, a quantitative approach is adopted. Amazon Mechanical Turk is used as data collection platform to collect responses with the aid of Qualtrics as questionnaire development tool. To reach the maximum scope of hospitality and tourism services, hotel guests, restaurant patrons, travelers, airline customers, and theme park travelers are included in the sample. This study adopts a quantitative approach to investigate the factors that contribute to the varied customer engagement behaviors (i.e. online ratings, online reviews, online blogging, and customer-to-customer interactions). Successful industry practices demonstrate that customer engagement brings many benefits and opportunities to maintain business sustainability and profitability.

To investigate the value co-creation process in wellness tourism, this study constructed a structural equation model of customer interactions with (1) the environment, (2) service employees, and (3) other customers relating to customer-perceived value and customer engagement. Empirical data were collected from 528 survey respondents who were at wellness tourism resorts. The results reveal that all three types of interaction have positive effects on customer-perceived value, and that perceived value positively affects customer engagement. Based on this finding, management recommendations for wellness tourism service enterprises are given.

Value creation is essential for successfully operating a firm and becomes a critical issue for realizing cross-firm competition and industrial performance distinctions. Tourism scholars have viewed tourism value-chain (TVC) as a useful tool to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of performance through controlling the impact factors in tourism products and services. However, few extant studies focus on the works of performance measurement in the tourism industry. This study applies Yilmaz and Bititci’s (2006 a, b) concept to develop novel performance measurement and value creation indicators for industrial tourism and customers through a crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The QCA approach considers asymmetric relationships—reporting conditions that are sufficient or necessary to cause an outcome condition. QCA allows exploring the causal-effect relationship between the variables. In-depth interview with five senior managers and five customers were conducted. The QCA results showed that industrial tourism and customer performance indicators have complex links with value creation. The main theoretical contributions of this study extends through four stages of TVC on both manufacturing and industrial tourism, developing causal-effect connections of industrial tourism, and customer performance on value creation. The study describes how proprietors and service providers promoted brand identification and firm’s reputation for achieving industrial tourism value. The findings beneficially provide practical implications for proprietors and customers for applying performance indicators once aiming to develop an appropriate marketing strategy and create industrial tourism and customer values.