Seeing the future, feeling the pressure: How AI vision communication shapes AI crafting among hotel and tourism employees

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into hospitality and tourism operations, its implications for employees' adaptive behavior have attracted growing attention. Drawing on the proactive motivation model, this study examines how perceived AI vision communication effectiveness is associated with hotel and tourism employees' AI crafting through future work self-salience and performance-avoidance goal orientation and how these relationships depend on AI self-efficacy. Using three-wave time-lagged data from 418 employees in mainland China, the results reveal two opposing pathways linking perceived AI vision communication effectiveness to AI crafting. It is positively related to AI crafting through higher future work self-salience but negatively related to AI crafting through higher performance-avoidance goal orientation. AI self-efficacy strengthens the positive pathway while weakening the negative one. These findings suggest that organizational AI communication is associated with employees’ AI crafting through both future-oriented and constraining motivational responses.