Breaking bad: how anticipated emotions and perceived severity shape tourist civility?

How to alleviate tourist incivility (i.e. social and environmental deviant behaviors) is not only a practical concern but an emerging tourism research topic. Advocating civilized tourist behavior could be an effective tool in enhancing sustainable tourism. In this paper, we test how tourists’ anticipated emotions and perceived severity (of tourism incivility problems) shape tourist civility via an extended norm activation model (NAM). A total of 401 valid questionnaires were obtained from tourists of a national wetland park in China. The results indicated that: 1) both positive and negative anticipated emotions not only have a direct impact on tourist civility but also have an indirect impact via personal norms, 2) positive anticipated emotions (as compared to negative ones) play a more vital role in the tourist civility formation, and 3) perceived severity of tourism incivility problems negatively moderates the links of personal norms and negative anticipated emotions to tourist civility. This paper provides theoretical and practical implications to better understand the role of anticipated emotions and perceived severity in tourist civility decision-making.