The Effect of Mental Health Risk Perception on Revisit Willingness of Rural Homestay Tourists—A Multi-Group Comparative Analysis

Abstract

Tourists’ mental health risk perceptions have a crucial impact on destination management organizations and other tourism practitioners. As an important support for rural tourism, the mental health risk perception of rural homestay tourists requires further attention from researchers to promote the sustainable development of the rural homestay industry. Based on the structural equation model and AMOS, this study considers the rural homestay industry as the background, explores the relationship between the mental health risk perception of rural homestay tourists under the COVID-19 pandemic, emotional solidarity between tourists and operators, and tourists’ willingness to revisit, and analyzes the differences in tourist groups with different infection frequencies. In this study, questionnaires were randomly distributed to the tourists of rural hotels in Nanjing. 740 questionnaires were collected and 666 valid questionnaires were recovered. The results show that tourists’ mental health risk perception has a significant negative effect on tourists’ willingness to revisit. However, tourists’ mental health risk perception effectively promoted emotional solidarity between tourists and operators, and thus significantly improved tourists’ willingness to revisit, in which emotional unity was the mediating variable. There were significant differences in tourists’ willingness to visit after different infection frequencies. The willingness of tourists to risk being infected with the virus was more significantly affected by their mental health risk perception and emotional solidarity.