key: cord-0973913-18nvr5rz authors: Tse, Serene; Tung, Vincent Wing Sun title: Residents' discrimination against tourists date: 2020-10-06 journal: Ann Tour Res DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2020.103060 sha: 10c42367958006ce869890397b6296fdd0afe112 doc_id: 973913 cord_uid: 18nvr5rz nan discriminatory responses against tourists. For instance, residents who reported everyday discrimination (e.g., been called names or insulted) were more likely to have performed harmful actions against tourists (e.g., be unfriendly or mock a tourist) and support further discriminatory responses amidst COVID-19 (e.g., exclude tourists from public and private spaces). Residents were not more sympathetic to discrimination after having perceived discrimination themselves; instead, there was a significant relationship from everyday discrimination to supporting harmful and discriminatory responses against tourists. An online survey was conducted with American citizens in early February 2020, near the beginning of COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. A 50-50 gendered, non-student sampling approach was adopted. Nine items were used to measure perceived everyday discrimination (Williams et al., 1997 ) on a 4-point frequency scale. Twelve items were used to assess residents' facilitative or harmful actions against tourists on a 7-point agreement scale. Six discriminatory responses against Mainland Chinese tourists that have been reported since the COVID-19 outbreak were evaluated on a 7-point agreement scale. 203 surveys were collected (49.8% female; 59.6% between 25 and 44 years old). Composite reliabilities (CR) for the three measurements exceeded 0.70 (Hu & Bentler, 1999) . Tables 1, 2, and 3 show the means and standard deviations for all the actual items in the study. A significant positive relationship (c = 0.247, p < 0.001) between everyday discrimination (X) to discriminatory responses against tourists (Y) was identified. Parallel mediation analysis using SPSS Process v3.3 (Hayes, 2013 ) was adopted to evaluate the mediating effects of residents' facilitative or harmful actions. Everyday discrimination has a significant positive link with harmful actions (a 2 = 0.541, p < 0.001). Harmful actions also induced further discriminatory responses against tourists (b 2 = 0.397, p < 0.001). A 95% confidence level based on 10,000 bootstrap samples indicated a significant indirect effect through harmful actions (a 2 b 2 = 0.215, 95% CI [0.118, 0.331]) (see Fig. 1 ). The results indicate significant positive relationship among the three constructs, suggesting that residents who perceived everyday discrimination were more likely to endorse harmful and discriminatory responses against tourists. This is a worrisome phenomenon in society, especially with increasing intergroup conflicts given the outbreak of COVID-19 as being discriminated against could potentially elicit further discrimination against other individuals. A possible explanation could be residents who perceived everyday discrimination may readily discriminate against others who are more obvious outgroup members to address assimilation motives within their communities. This could allow them to share similarities as residents against a common outgroup. Another possible explanation is that residents may endorse a certain extent of discrimination to display the perceived social hierarchy of locals over tourists, indicating residents' superiority. Discrimination may become particularly salient after COVID-19. Wealth disparities and inequalities among individuals may increase as income and discretionary spending tightens (United Nation, 2020). Consequently, those who can travel internationally could be seen as 'haves' versus a large segment of the resident population of 'have nots'. Notions of 'us' versus 'them' could intensify, leading to negative sentiments, discrimination, and social intolerance. This study contributes by highlighting the complexity of host-tourist dynamics beyond the interactions between residents and tourists, extending to the dynamics among residents within the same community. The findings suggest that residents' perceived everyday discrimination could have a spillover effect on tourists, which offers a novel perspective in studies of host-guest relations. More importantly, the study draws attention for the potential to take into account the broader societal views of everyday discrimination in future tourism studies. Additionally, the resident-tourist intergroup relation is critical for fostering positive host-guest relations and sustainable tourism development. While existing studies have mainly focused on resident-tourist conflicts (Chien & Ritchie, 2018) , this study provides a different angle on the influence of resident-to-resident's everyday discrimination on subsequent resident-to-tourist relations. As this study suggests, there is an interesting connection between how residents perceived discrimination by their fellow citizens in everyday lives and how they subsequently treat tourists. Practically, this study offers insights to tourism officials on the importance of promoting mutual understanding between social groups (i.e., resident-resident, and resident-tourist) (Maruyama & Woosnam, 2015) . Policymakers are encouraged to take action against domestic discrimination as the development of host-guest relations from a tourism perspective could also be influenced by the social dynamics among residents. A limitation of this study is that it measures residents' perceived everyday discrimination based on residents' subjective views of their daily interactions with other residents. Although perceived everyday discrimination has been widely employed in intergroup studies, future research could replicate this study by examining the actual everyday discrimination experienced by residents within their communities. The work described in this article was fully supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. PolyU255017/16B). a Measured on a 7-point scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree. Understanding visitor-resident relations in overtourism: Developing resilience for sustainable tourism Understanding intergroup conflicts in tourism Why do Airbnb hosts discriminate? Examining the sources and manifestations of discrimination in host practice No Chinese allowed': Racism and fear are now spreading along with the coronavirus Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives COVID-19 -One in seven people would avoid people of Chinese origin or appearance Residents' ethnic attitudes and support for ethnic neighborhood tourism: The case of a Brazilian town in Japan Asian teens, punched, kicked and spat at in three separate racist coronavirus attacks in Exeter in just one day An analysis of adopting dual pricing for museums: The case of the national museum of Iran The tourist stereotype model: Positive and negative dimensions COVID-19 likely to shrink global GDP by almost one per cent in 2020 Discrimination and racial disparities in health: Evidence and needed research Racial differences in physical and mental health: Socio-economic status, stress and discrimination Cultural conflicts or cultural cushion? Serene Tse is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management Tung is an Associate Professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management