Unveiling the buffering effect of customer engagement on negative word-of-mouth in tourism and hospitality

Previous research argues that customers tend to disseminate negative word-of-mouth (WOM) when encountering service failures. In contrast, this study reveals a buffering effect on negative WOM: high engagement tourists are less inclined to spread negative WOM in the co-creation failure context. Three experiments across various tourism scenarios were employed to evaluate the study hypotheses and rule out other explanations. The results show that heightened customer engagement diminishes tourists’ intention to spread negative WOM when value co-creation fails (Study 1). The motivation to protect self-image mediates the buffering effect of customer engagement on negative WOM (Study 2), and this buffering effect is more pronounced on high social connectedness platforms (Study 3). The findings provide new insights into value co-creation, WOM, service failures, and marketing for tourist industry managers and researchers.