Revealing tourists' appraisal process and consequences of unethical tourism incidents: based on a mixed-method study

Exposure to unethical tourism incidents tarnished the reputation of scenic areas surrounding the destination, leading to criticism and reduced tourist traffic. In this regard, understanding tourists' appraisal process and the consequences of such incidents is the key to winning them back for merchants and managers. To provide an effective strategy, this paper synthesises Affective Event Theory (AET) and Attribution Theory (AT) to elucidate how tourists appraise and respond to unethical incidents and propose dual appraisals, namely threat appraisal and blame attribution, which trigger negative moral emotions and travel avoidances sequentially. Through structural equation modelling of sample data collected from 434 online experiments, we verify the above causal hypotheses and explore the moderating role of uncertainty avoidance. Additionally, through asymmetric case studies, we validate complex relationships between threat appraisal, blame attribution, uncertainty avoidance, and negative moral emotion, proposing corresponding configurations. Our findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of AET and AT and offer practical insights for destination management in handling unethical incidents.