Effect of AI authorship disclosure on purchase intention in cultural tourism souvenirs: The mediating roles of perceived effort and authenticity

As generative artificial intelligence (AI) expands in cultural tourism souvenir design and disclosure policies evolve, evidence remains limited on how AI authorship disclosure shapes responses across nationality groups and products. Drawing on signaling theory, two studies compared consumers from China and the U.S. across three disclosure conditions: unlabeled, human–AI co-created, and AI-generated. Study 1 used tourism postcard stimuli ( N = 1110), and Study 2 used mug and tourism tote bag stimuli ( N = 1255). Both studies found that disclosure affected purchase intention and interacted significantly with nationality. Differences across disclosure conditions were significant among participants from the U.S. but not among those from China. In Study 1, the unlabeled and human–AI co-created conditions did not differ, and both exceeded the AI-generated condition. In Study 2, the unlabeled condition exceeded both disclosed conditions for both products, whereas the latter two did not differ. AI-generated disclosure was consistently associated with lower purchase intention than no disclosure, whereas the relative position of human–AI co-created disclosure differed between studies. Parallel mediation analyses showed indirect effects through perceived effort and perceived authenticity. Perceived effort effects were significant for both comparisons with the unlabeled condition across three examined products, whereas the human–AI co-created versus unlabeled authenticity effect was nonsignificant in Study 1 but significant in Study 2. Nationality moderated some, but not all, indirect effects. Thus, firms should not assume that human–AI co-creation enhances responses and should consider clarifying human contribution and pretesting disclosure strategies across products and national markets.