Rigid versus flexible: The effect of destination revitalization policy on tourists’ travel behavioral intention

Destination revitalization policies have been considered functional or institutional ones that would stimulate the tourism markets. This paper redefines the concept of destination revitalization policies as social cues and how they influence the social judgments and intention to travel by tourists. Based on the stereotype content model and temporal construal theory, we differentiate between two kinds of revitalization policies: flexible and rigid, and form a theoretical model to describe the differentiated psychological mechanisms of these policies and boundary conditions. Evidence from seven studies, including one semi-structured interview study and six scenario-based experiments, shows that flexible revitalization policies generally elicit stronger travel behavioral intention than rigid policies. This is brought about by differentiated social judgments: the flexible policies lead to increased perceptions of warmth, and the rigid policies to increased perceptions of competence. In addition, the effects are conditional to temporal distance. The flexible policies are more effective in case of close-term travel choices and rigid policies in case of long-term planning. By placing the destination revitalization policy in a new perspective as destination communication, the given study contributes to the existing knowledge on destination marketing and tourism policy governing and presents practical outcomes of how the policy should be designed to respond to how tourists make decisions and to ensure the sustainability of the development of a destination.