“到此一游”现象为何屡禁不止?——基于道德认同的视角

Why the Failure to Prohibit Tourists' “I Was Here”Graffiti Behavior is Repeated? The Perspective of Moral Identity

在旅游景区,诸如"某某到此一游"式的不文明涂鸦行为屡禁不止,成为旅游行业一个久治不愈的顽疾。文章从道德认同的视角对该问题进行深入的理论研究,运用实验方法探究道德认同与游客道德行为意向之间的关系。研究发现:(1)启动游客的道德认同能显著提高游客道德行为意向;(2)游客的公共自我意识调节道德认同与道德行为意向之间的关系;(3)自我问责对道德认同和游客道德行为意向的关系起部分中介作用,并且受到公共自我意识的调节。该研究将道德认同和自我问责引入旅游研究领域,拓展了游客消费行为研究的深度和广度。从实践上,将道德认同运用于约束游客不文明行为,对游客行为进行积极的引导有一定的借鉴意义。

At tourist attractions,graffiti behavior,such as writing "I was here"or a person"s name on cultural relics,is usually prohibited;however,it is still a frequent phenomenon.As well as writing on cultural relics,inappropriate tourist behavior includes such acts as littering,spitting,climbing on relics, walking on lawns,and stealing exhibits.Worldwide,both Chinese and foreign tourists have been found to engage in such inappropriate behavior in scenic areas.Most domestic scholars attribute this type of behavior to such factors as spiritual civilization having fallen behind material civilization,the formalization of quality education,and poor ecological consciousness on the part of tourists.In response,scholars have suggested various management strategies,such as promulgating relevant laws by governments and greater tourist guidance by administrative departments.Various administrative measures have been undertaken,but the results have always been negative.One of the main reasons is that inappropriate behavior derives from the moral awareness of tourists;thus,much deeper solutions are required.Moral identity is a mature concept in the field of moral cognition:it refers to a set of moralcharacteristics of self-schemas.It has been confirmed that moral identity can serve a supervisory role for individual behavior in some contexts.Moral identity contains both the character perspective and the social-cognitive perspective;but the two perspectives are basically the same.The social-cognitive perspective maintains that a changing situation can produce different levels of moral identity. Accordingly,the present research adopts the social-cognitive perspective.To examine the mediation of inappropriate tourist behavior,this paper introduces the concept of self-accountability,which relates to the desire to practice one's self-standards.Further,the concept of public self-consciousness is introduced to determine the moderating effect with this model. Inappropriate behavior is a sensitive issue:respondents often conceal their true opinions in surveys or experiments.Thus,in the present study,inappropriate behavior was assessed in terms of moral behavior intentions:the higher an individual's moral behavior intention,the lower is their intention to conduct inappropriate behavior.First,a pretest was conducted and the study's main effect was confirmed.However,the reliability of the moral behavior intention scale was found to be rather low. Accordingly,the scale was adjusted.In the subsequent main experiment,510subjects were randomly selected following online and offiine recruiting;they were randomly assigned to an activating moral identity group or non-activating moral identity group.After eliminating incomplete or non-valid responses,459questionnaires were used for analysis:135from online and 324from offiine respondents.The data were analyzed using SPSS,version 22software.The concept reliability and validity were empirically tested,and it was found that the experimental data were valid for analysis. The following results were obtained.(1)Activating tourists'moral identity can significantly improve their moral behavior intention.(2)The relationship between moral identity and tourists'moral behavior intention was moderated by their public self-consciousness.(3)Self-accountability partially mediates the effect of moral identity on moral behavior intention;among tourists whose public self- consciousness was at a higher level than that of others,the mediating effect of self-accountability was weaker.This study introduces the concepts of moral identity and self-accountability to tourism academia,and it extends the depth and breadth of tourist consumption behavior research.The results have practical benefits in activating moral identity toward reducing inappropriate behavior by tourists; that outcome will be favorable for managing tourist behavior by relevant administrative departments.