导游情绪劳动策略对游客目的地形象感知的跨层影响

Cross-level Effect of Tour Guides’Emotional Labor Strategies on Tourists’Perception of Destination Images

文章试图应用情绪感染理论,探讨导游情绪劳动策略对游客目的地形象感知的作用过程,尤其是积极情绪在导游情绪劳动与游客目的地形象感知之间的中介机制,以及情绪易感性对情绪劳动策略与积极情绪关系之间的调节作用。研究通过对52个旅游团队888份调查问卷的分析发现:导游情绪劳动策略对游客认知产生着差异化影响,当导游浅层表演时,情绪劳动与游客目的地形象感知呈现负向关系,而深层表演呈现正向关系;浅层表演负向影响积极情绪,而深层表演正向影响积极情绪,积极情绪中介了情绪劳动策略与目的地形象感知的关系;情绪易感性对情绪劳动和积极情绪的关系具有调节作用。该研究从理论上丰富了情绪劳动策略、积极情绪及其情绪易感性与形象感知的关系研究,从情绪劳动策略视角为旅行社经理、目的地管理者在导游服务、目的地形象建设和品牌营销等方面提供了一定的实践指导。

Service industry employees directly serve customers to ensure that they are satisfied with their consumer experience.A key requirement of this service is that these employees must adjust their inner emotional feelings according to their service obligations.In particular,in group tourism services,a noticeable characteristic is that tour guides are often required to be in contact with tourists and interact with multiple service subjects.To better improve the tourists’emotional experience,tour guides often need to regulate their own emotions according to their professional code of conduct for the service interaction and show the facial expressions and body language expected by the tourists.The tour guides’emotional labor strategies will directly affect the tourists’product quality assessment of the destination,and may further affect their cognition of the destination image.This simultaneously affects tourists’willingness to return and promote the destination via word-of-mouth.The destination image is important for the related tourism enterprises to improve their market share and maintain competitiveness in a competitive tourism market.Therefore,exploring the relationship between tour guides’emotional labor strategy and destination image can provide a scientific basis for destination image management and brand building.Thus,the emotional contagion theory is applied in discussing the mechanism of the tour guides’emotional labor strategy on the tourists’perception of destination image;in particular,the mediating mechanism effect of positive emotions between the guides’emotional work,the tourists’image perception of the destination,and the regulatory mechanism of emotional susceptibility between emotional labor strategies and positive emotional relationships.Through the analysis of 888 completed questionnaires from 52 tourism teams,tour guides’emotional labor strategies were found to have a differentiated impact on tourists’cognition.When the tour guide performs a surface action,the guide’s emotional labor has a negative relationship with the tourists’perception of the destination image,while the guide’s performance of a deep action has a positive relationship.Surface actions negatively affect positive emotions,while deep actions positively affects positive emotions,which mediate the relationship between emotional labor strategies and destination image perception.In addition,emotional susceptibility has a regulating effect on the relationship between emotional labor and positive emotions.Studies of these two emotional labor strategies,i.e.,surface and deep actions,will not only deepen the objective understanding of tour guides’emotional state on the quality of tourists’emotional experience,but also expand the understanding of the mechanism of emotional labor on the perception of destination image.In addition,the functional relationship among emotional labor strategy,positive emotions,and destination image can be verified further.Through their emotional labor strategy,tour guides stimulate the tourists’positive emotions and then extend these positive emotional reactions to the positive evaluation of the destination image.Therefore,we can see that the positive emotional interactions between tour guides and tourists are of great importance for the construction and long-term development of destination brand images.This research not only theoretically enriches the relationship between emotional labor strategy,positive emotion,emotional susceptibility,and image perception,but also provides some practical guidance for travel agency managers and destination managers in aspects of tour guide services,destination image construction,and brand marketing from an emotional labor strategy perspective.