{"title":"The unintended sustainable consequences of free upgrade: How unearned preferential treatment reduces sustainable behavior","authors":"Jihao Hu , Zhengzheng Xu , Lisa C. Wan , Wei Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.annals.2024.103872","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The prior research on unearned preferential treatment has merely focused on its impact on consumer reactions or firms' performance (e.g., customer satisfaction, repurchase intention), with its sustainable consequences underexplored. In addition, holding the resource abundance account, past work on promotion tools (e.g., price discounts) has mainly examined positive social outcomes. Through a series of studies (<em>N</em> = 8402), combining field and experimental data with actual behavior measures (e.g., actual towel usage, click-through rate), this research demonstrates that, due to its unique exclusive nature, receiving unearned preferential treatment can situationally enhance consumers' psychological entitlement, which, in turn, renders consumers' decreased sustainable behavior. Intriguingly, marketers can reverse this negative effect by strategically harnessing a status-signaling appeal of sustainable behavior.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48452,"journal":{"name":"Annals of Tourism Research","volume":"110 ","pages":"Article 103872"},"PeriodicalIF":10.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Annals of Tourism Research","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016073832400149X","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The prior research on unearned preferential treatment has merely focused on its impact on consumer reactions or firms' performance (e.g., customer satisfaction, repurchase intention), with its sustainable consequences underexplored. In addition, holding the resource abundance account, past work on promotion tools (e.g., price discounts) has mainly examined positive social outcomes. Through a series of studies (N = 8402), combining field and experimental data with actual behavior measures (e.g., actual towel usage, click-through rate), this research demonstrates that, due to its unique exclusive nature, receiving unearned preferential treatment can situationally enhance consumers' psychological entitlement, which, in turn, renders consumers' decreased sustainable behavior. Intriguingly, marketers can reverse this negative effect by strategically harnessing a status-signaling appeal of sustainable behavior.
期刊介绍：
The Annals of Tourism Research is a scholarly journal that focuses on academic perspectives related to tourism. The journal defines tourism as a global economic activity that involves travel behavior, management and marketing activities of service industries catering to consumer demand, the effects of tourism on communities, and policy and governance at local, national, and international levels. While the journal aims to strike a balance between theory and application, its primary focus is on developing theoretical constructs that bridge the gap between business and the social and behavioral sciences. The disciplinary areas covered in the journal include, but are not limited to, service industries management, marketing science, consumer marketing, decision-making and behavior, business ethics, economics and forecasting, environment, geography and development, education and knowledge development, political science and administration, consumer-focused psychology, and anthropology and sociology.
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
分享
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：
扫码关注我们
