A Comparative Study of the Impact of Negative Word of Mouth on Travel Intentions of Chinese and Korean Consumers in Tourism Destinations

Abstract

This article is based on reducing the negative effect of negative word-of-mouth on con-sumers’ travel intentions. We constructed a model of consumers’ travel intentions to explore the influence of negative word-of-mouth about tourist destinations on consumers’ travel intentions, examine the moderating effect of destination familiarity and the mediating utility of negative emotions, and conduct a comparative analysis between China and South Korea. Based on SPSS and AMOS analysis, we found the following: (1) Negative word-of-mouth has no direct positive effect on travel intention, and negative emotion plays a completely mediating role between negative word-of-mouth and travel intention, whereas high-intensity negative emotion is positively related to travel intention. (2) Travel destination familiarity has a moderating effect on negative word-of-mouth and negative emotions. Consumers with higher familiarity make external attributions and generate high-intensity negative emotions when they receive negative word-of-mouth; consumers with lower familiarity make internal attributions and generate low-intensity negative emotions. To improve consumers’ travel intentions, companies can enhance the relationship between tourist destination brands and tourists, adopt different management strategies for negative word-of-mouth according to the level of familiarity of destinations, and formulate tourism strate-gies.