A study of consumers' intentions to participate in responsible tourism using message framing and appeals

Since responsible tourism (RT) emerged as a critical issue in the tourism literature in the early 2000s, the challenge has been how to encourage consumers to practice RT. In this context, the goal of this study is to examine effective ways to promote individuals' RT behavior using message framing and appeals. The present study used campaign advertisements as a stimulus and employed a 2 × 2 factorial design ((message framing: gain framing vs. loss faming) × (appeal: rational appeal vs. emotional appeal)) in the experiment. In addition, the study investigated the moderating impact of involvement on people's attitude towards advertising and intention to participate in RT. Independent-sample t-tests and a two-way analysis of variance were used to verify the hypotheses. The results of the study revealed that gain-framed messages had a greater influence on individuals' attitude towards the advertisement and their intention to participate in RT than loss-framed messages in the low-involvement group. Furthermore, rational and emotional appeals had a greater influence on people's attitude towards the advertisement in the high- and low-involvement groups, respectively.