Sustainable cross-border tourism management: COVID-19 avoidance motive on resident hospitality

The psyche-altering effects of COVID-19 pandemic on sustainable tourism behaviors are underexplored. More so, the scant research largely presents tourists’ perspective. Extending this body of work, our study–deploying evolutionary tourism paradigm, examines whether, the why and when perceived COVID-19 infectability (pathogen avoidance motive) impairs resident hospitality, using a multi-wave data from MTurk U.S. workers (N = 857). As predicted, perceived COVID-19 infectability relates positively with tourist negative stereotype, which then relates negatively with resident hospitality. Unexpectedly, perceived COVID-19 infectability’s relation with resident hospitality was positive. However, tourist negative stereotype transmits the negative effect of perceived COVID-19 infectability to resident hospitality. Moreover, COVID-19 origin belief amplifies the positive effect of perceived COVID-19 infectability on tourist negative stereotype, and further strengthens the indirect effect of perceived COVID-19 infectability on resident hospitality through tourist negative stereotype. Theoretical, social, and managerial implications for sustainable tourism development have been discussed.