Understanding residents’ attitudes towards tourists through implicit stereotypes

Abstract

Residents’ attitudes have been an important area in tourism research. Recent studies have employed the concept of stereotypes from social psychology to understand its content and influences on residents’ emotions and behaviors towards tourists. However, existing studies tend to emphasize measurements that capture explicit stereotypes, despite the importance of individuals’ unconscious evaluations of others. This study addresses this gap by assessing residents’ implicit stereotypes, emotions, and behaviors towards tourists via a novel implicit association test (IAT). The results suggest direct relationships between positive implicit stereotypes, emotions, and behaviors; however, negative implicit stereotypes did not arouse negative emotions or harmful behaviors, which suggests a possible boundary condition for these connections. This study contributes to the literature by highlighting an alternative perspective to the formation of residents’ attitudes, and by providing insights for destination management organizations (DMOs) on the value of measuring implicit stereotypes for understanding host–guest relations.