The Effect of Destination Social Responsibility on Tourists’ Satisfaction: The Mediating Role of Emotions

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to define destination social responsibility as a multidimensional construct and examine the relationships between destination social responsibility, tourists’ emotions and their satisfaction, through the lens of corporate social responsibility. A model is empirically tested with a sample of 359 random foreign tourists visiting Hoi An, Vietnam. The results indicate that all destination social responsibility dimensions, including economic, environmental, legal–ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities significantly enhance tourists’ emotions, while only legal–ethical and philanthropic responsibilities directly affect tourists’ satisfaction. The findings also confirm the mediating effect of emotions between destination social responsibility and tourists’ overall satisfaction.

Do the Social Responsibility Efforts of the Destination Affect the Loyalty of Tourists?

“…DSR emphasizes the importance of responsible efforts of all involved stakeholders to build tourist destinations in a sustainable manner. In light of the definition of DSR, it is obvious that DSR should be jointly supported by not only the public and the private sectors involved in a destination, but also the tourists [10,11]. If DSR is not preferred by tourists, it will weaken the motive of DSR, and destination sustainability will be difficult to achieve.…”

“…Su et al [12] investigated the impact of DSR perception on the intention of tourists to revisit a destination and recommend the place to their acquaintances and found that DSR is positively associated with both revisit and referral intentions. According to the study by Tran et al [11], DSR has shown a positive effect on tourists' satisfaction through a mediating effect on their emotions.…”

“…In addition, there are also notable differences in services, brand personality perceptions, visit intentions, tourist satisfaction, tourist behaviors, etc., in terms of their cultural backgrounds [57,64,68,70,71]. DSR is defined as the collective activities of destination stakeholders to conduct socially responsible tourism [10,11]. The perception of what is DSR can vary depending on their culture.…”

“…Constructs employed in this study were assessed through multiple items on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). DSR, as suggested by previous studies, remains comprised of economic, environmental, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities [10][11][12]72,[74][75][76]. Economic responsibility and environmental were measured through seven items, legal responsibility, and philanthropic responsibility through four items, and ethical responsibility through six items.…”

“…There has subsequently been a growing research trend and emerging literature on destination social responsibility (hereafter DSR; e.g., [9][10][11]). DSR, which is the collective concept and efforts of destination stakeholders to take social responsibilities, is defined by the perception of tourists [9,10].…”