The effect of service failure crisis in destinations on tourism boycotts: The moderating role of power distance beliefs

Few studies have assessed the impact of service failure crises on tourism boycotts from the perspective of social distance. Grounded in self-bias theory and construal level theory, this study examines how the service failure crisis in destinations across three distance levels (personal, communal, and external) influences tourists’ tourism boycotts while investigating the serial mediating effect of perceived relative deprivation and trust, as well as the moderating effect of power distance beliefs. The results of two experiments indicate that: (1) tourism boycotts were strongest when service failure crises occurred within personal scope, followed by communal scope, and weakest in external scope; (2) perceived relative deprivation and trust in destinations sequentially mediated the impact of the scopes of service failure crises on tourism boycott; (3) power distance belief amplified the negative impacts of the scopes of service failure crises, indicating that individuals with high power distance beliefs exhibited more pronounced differences in their negative responses to different crisis scope. This study enriches the literature on service failure crises in destinations and tourism boycotts from a social distance perspective, providing guidance for destinations in mitigating the impacts of service failure and promoting tourism market recovery after crisis.