Ipkin Anthony Wong

• PhD, University of Hawaii
• Professor at Sun Yat-sen University

Serving tourists in dialect can be a double-edged sword, as the literature acknowledges it may hamper language processing fluency while offering a sense of distinctiveness for tourists. Building on Two-Factor Theory of Emotion, this research contributes to the literature by articulating a paradoxical process in which dialectal service can be intern...

Purpose The study aims to investigate the effects of bodily feelings on preference for robotic service by examining direct and indirect sensations from physical and metaphorically projected bodily feelings. Design/methodology/approach Through four empirical experiments involving video and recall tasks to metaphorically manipulate participants’ bod...

Purpose This research aims to explore the mechanisms and conditions that motivate diners to engage in foodstagramming. It focuses on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations, and the role of the dining environment in facilitating social connection and social commerce intention. Design/methodology/approach Two scenario-based experiments were conducte...

Purpose What kind of robotic service do customers prefer when they dine out alone? This study aims to investigate how robotic service type affects solo diners’ attitude toward robotic service and restaurant revisit intention, through the mediation of rapport. It also examines the moderating effects of the need to belong and restaurant type. Design...

The present work explores whether the generative pre-trained transformers (GPT) can complement empirical research in tourism as the GPT extends beyond commercial applications. In particular, we utilized OpenAI’s Python API to interact with the GPT-3.5-turbo. Using GPT as a special subject, we coined AI-generative study (AGS) to validate key finding...

Abstract Purpose This paper aims to answer questions pertinent to whether or not services provided by smart hotels are really what customers are looking for, as well as to ascertain what are some unintended experiences guests may encounter. In essence, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first in the field to acknowledge the...

The present work explores whether the generative pre-trained transformers (GPT) can complement empirical research in tourism as the GPT extends beyond commercial applications. In particular, we utilized OpenAI’s Python API to interact with the GPT-3.5-turbo. Using GPT as a special subject, we coined AI-generative study (AGS) to validate key finding...

The popularity of animated characters has led foodservice operators to open restaurants that put cartoons at center stage. This type of establishment is referred to as a “cartoon café.” This qualitative inquiry employed two empirical studies to answer why customers patronize this type of eatery. Building on relational third-place theory (RTPT), it...

What happens when a tourist is stranded at a destination and prevented from returning home? We refer to such an individual as the “castaway tourist,” who is experiencing the above situation due to border/city lockdown or other extenuating circumstances. This inquiry builds upon control theory to unpack a homesickness remedy process under severe env...

Purpose This study aims to explore the role of social media visual posts (known as foodstagramming) on restaurant visit intention. Drawing on the heuristic–systematic model and normative focus theory, this research introduces a framework that assesses the effects of key foodstagramming attributes – vicarious expression, aesthetic appeal and post po...

Purpose The study aims to propose a triadic interaction model to assess the effect of customer–customer (C2C), employee–customer and robot–customer interactions on customer voluntary performance in the context of smart dining. Design/methodology/approach An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was used. First, a quantitative study surveyed...

The literature on tourist experience commonly puts the current en-route experience at the center stage through single-level analysis. This research steers away from that tradition to improvise a triple-experience model through multiple inquiries. Data were collected from a survey to assess how prior and current travel app usage experiences could im...

Technology has rendered as a means to reshape tourist experience, but it may backfire to created unintended consequences when technological devices are overused to dominate the experience creation process. This study investigates how and why smart technologies fail to reach their intended goals, and the unfavorable consequences in such circumstance...

The aim of the paper is to provide practical insights into a cultural tourism co-creation platform for building a service platform ecosystem from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives. Drawing on the service dominant logic and service ecosystem literature, the paper provides a comprehensive literature review and multiple stakeholder perspectives on t...

Is smart dining a smart choice? This research steers away from the positive connotation of smart service to embark on the smart service failure phenomenon. It draws on expectancy disconfirmation theory with data collection from two studies. Findings reveal a triadic model of service failure in smart eateries with respect to core smartness failure,...

This research draws on shattered assumptions theory and fantasy realization theory to underscore how abrupt changes in worldview could turn into a quest for new kinds of voyages. It proposes a model leading from meaning search to travel intention through the mediation of travel motivation and involvement. The moderations of COVID worry and loneline...

This research integrates the theoretical strands of crisis management and organizational agility to improvise a process in which organizations expedite their IT-based solutions to cope with mega disruptions, carried out through two studies. Using corpus linguistics as an analytical approach with data collected from press releases from 10 US retail...

Purpose Designing an effective metaverse experience through a tourism digital-twin platform is crucial to the success of metaverse tourism. How such a digital-twin platform should appeal to target users, however, lacks exploration. The study aims to advance a conceptual contribution by successfully creating a metaverse experience through a well-des...

The traumatic effect of quarantine and its subsequent coping strategies have been fairly underexplored. This research note draws on the cognitive appraisal theory (CAT) of stress to put forth a coping mechanism that stems from cognitive appraisals of a stressful isolation encounter to activate coping resources, which render as an oasis to cushion w...

The objective of this research is to assess tourists' subjective and psychological well-being during and after their trips through a multiwave design. Drawing on self-determination theory (SDT) and attention restoration theory (ART), an integrated theoretical framework was proposed to examine the relationships among perceived attention restoration,...

Purpose While the rise of chain restaurants has attracted increasing research interest, few studies have taken servicescape into consideration to examine its effects on transformative service outcomes. This study aims to assess how social service elements can provide customers with restorative qualities, though social components are considered vita...

With the advancement of digital technology, digital storytelling is becoming more and more widely used. However, academics have not delved deeply enough into digital storytelling in the realm of VR tourist study. The objective of this study is to investigate the narrative persuasion process of technology-provided presence and story satisfaction in...

Tourist interactions have maintained an increasing significance in the tourism literature. However, the existing research that accentuates dyadic-based inquires has become less relevant to the dynamism of the tourism service encounter where tourist-to-tourist interactions take place; and therefore, more forward-thinking dynamic-based perspectives t...

Meditation has largely been associated with its religious connotation in the tourism literature. The present research steers away from that tradition to focus on meditative practices as a leisure activity. It addresses the literature void by conducting a survey study on meditation tourists who participated in a 7-day meditation excursion. Based on...

What is destination cultural capital, and what is its role in tourism? The present inquiry addressed these questions by examining a mediated relationship among perceived destination cultural capital, impression in memory, brand love, enjoyable reminiscence, and revisit intention based on cultural capital theory and mental time travel perspective. I...

Purpose This study aims to use organizational fashion to underscore a novel phenomenon in which products, services and practices fade in and out of the tourism/hospitality setting within a specific time frame. Drawing from the fashion theoretical strands in organization research, this paper studies how fashion has been conceptualized, operationaliz...

The growing prevalence of social networking sites (SNSs) has transformed the way that hospitality employees connect with their coworkers. Whereas it has been investigated that befriending coworkers on SNSs may transition to favorable workplace relationships, what conditions such friendship transitions is under-researched. Building on social penetra...

Employee turnover intention is huge challenge for employers, especially in the highly stressful service industry. This study surveyed 1,236 front line casino employees across 29 organizations in Macau, the Casino paradise. Findings reveal that emotional intelligence (EI) plays a crucial role in allowing employ-ees to cope with environmental demands...

This study examines cross-cultural memorable local food experiences as perceived by international tourists using multilevel analysis. Based on the literature review, eight hypotheses were developed. A total of 925 questionnaires were completed by US tourists who travelled to Europe or Asia. These international tourists' food-related personality tra...

Purpose This study aims to unlock a ritual chain mechanism that promotes socio-mental (or socio-psychological) resilience. This study draws on interaction ritual chains theory and the concept of transformative service to answer the question of how people could be inspired toward an elevated level of group solidarity, emotional energy, morality and,...

This research aims to advance the literature by focusing on tourist engagement on travel social media sites (SNSs). Drawing on social exchange theory and engagement theory, it improvises the techno-exchange engagement model of SNS to highlight the role of trust induced from favorable (e.g. secondary control) and unfavorable (e.g. privacy violation)...

The study proposes AI-powered tools and applications as boundary-crossing objects to examine how AI performance can affect employees' job engagement, service and job performance. Job security is modelled as a moderator in the boundary-crossing process. Several theories including boundary crossing, goal setting and self-regulation are drawn on to po...

This research adopts the artificial intelligence (AI) device usage acceptance (AIDUA) model and draws on cognitive appraisal theory. It articulates a mediated relationship leading from social influence, hedonic motivation, and anthropomorphism to acceptance of or objection to AI device usage through the mediation of performance expectancy, effort e...

This study attends to Generation Zers’ volunteer tourism. It draws on self-determination and goal-setting theories to synthesize a model delineating how the interplay of internal and external environmental motivational factors reshapes green volunteering involvement amid the pandemic, leading to environmental goal attainment and persistent endeavor...

“A friend in need is a friend indeed” well elucidates international support amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on a dual-process model of emotional appraisal, this mixed-methods research aims to investigate positive psychological responses to international support. Study 1 is a multilevel investigation of the relationships between perceived suppor...

Music is acknowledged as an excellent means of evoking favorable behaviors and brand image, and this research puts auditory sensory input at center stage. By drawing on sensory marketing and cognitive balance theories, it proposes a model leading from music perception to destination image through the mediation of historical nostalgia, mental imager...

The central tenet of the tourism-area lifecycle (TALC) rests on the idea of change. This paper utilized latent-growth curve modelling (LGCM) to synthesize a time-variant lifecycle model that quantifies changes in TALC-based hotel development. We accommodated the model with cross-lagged analysis to draw causal inferences. Based on data collected fro...

Purpose This research paper aims to explore Airbnb’s online experience initiative, which has sparked a new wave of virtual tourism to improvise a large assortment of experiential activities through cyberspace. It works to answer questions pertinent to the type of virtual experiences tourists seek and how these experiences could fulfill tourist need...

The casino industry may have been stigmatized by its notorious image due to the negative consequences that gambling brings. Yet, they are at the forefront in combating the pandemic, taking a proactive stand to expedite corporate social responsibility (CSR) through a constellation of means in a timely manner. Moreover, the majority of research focus...

The pursuit of beauty has been a part of our daily lives, as the hospitality industry recognizes by offering aesthetically pleasing artifacts through a constellation of service attributes. This research takes a qualitative approach to explore hospitality service elements that are aesthetically appealing to customers. It draws on Adorno’s aesthetic...

Purpose This study aims to synthesize a research model based on artificial intelligence (AI) applications in the casino setting. The model incorporates the technology acceptance model (TAM) along with three external drivers, including factors pertinent to personal traits (i.e. openness), AI technology (i.e. visibility, security and social influence...

This research takes a post-postmodern stance to investigate tourists' predisposition toward alterreal authenticity (i.e., altered reality). It draws on Schachter's two-factor theory of emotion to highlight a model that examines the effects of authenticity and cultural difference, and their interactions on cultural-heritage consumption, through a fi...

Purpose Why would a hospitality or tourism enterprise’s talent program backfire to demotivate interns from engaging in their jobs? This study aims to synthesize theoretical strands from the self-determination theory, person–environment fit theory and conservation of resources theory to investigate the predictors of perceived person–job fit and how...

Purpose Drawing on the person–supervisor fit theory, this study aims to adopts a dyadic and relational approach to investigate the congruence between the leader’s and the follower’s learning goal orientation (LGO) on their leader–member exchange (LMX) quality and the follower’s innovation. Design/methodology/approach The participants were 213 fron...

This study marks an early attempt to evaluate staycation incentive programs initiated by local authorities. It aims to gauge the effectiveness of staycation programs in cultivating learning opportunities and restorative benefits with an emphasis on temporal positive psychological outcomes amid this continuing pandemic. Relying on a survey-based res...

Integrating the social norm perspective and regulatory focus theory, this research expands the current understanding of how and why (in)congruence modes between supervisor prescriptive and descriptive norms shape voluntary and required employee green behaviors (EGBs) through a regulatory focus process. It tests a proposed model with two independent...

Although practitioners are increasingly interested in promoting greening as a means to fulfill tourists’ ecological needs and to conform to the pro-environmental norm, it remains unclear how ecological beliefs and social conformity to greening unfold to promote event tourism. The purpose of this study is to investigate how ecological belief can be...

This inquiry articulates the co-development phenomenon in which improvisation of tourism products is created from multiple suppliers across different domains. Drawing on the S-O-R model and situated cognition theory, a framework was proposed and tested through multilevel analysis with empirical evidence taken from an array of shows held within a fe...

Purpose This paper aims to classify the sentiment of online tourism-hospitality reviews at an aspect level. A new aspect-oriented sentiment classification method is proposed based on a neural network model. Design/methodology/approach This study constructs an aspect-oriented sentiment classification model using an integrated four-layer neural netw...

Literature reviews serve as cornerstones for advancing the corpus of existing knowledge. This article offers an overview of the evolution of destination studies from 2000 to 2020. The current study first overviews 20 destination review articles and then applies bibliometric algorithms to determine authorships, popular topics, thematic clusters, and...

Purpose This study aims to draw upon boundary crossing theory to examine the transition of casino hotel guests’ revisit intentions from casino social media sites to casino properties, with the influence of the motivation–opportunity–ability model. Design/methodology/approach Under a quantitative approach, 20 casinos that operated official social m...

This research explores the eudaimonic environmental pursuit of Generation Zers. Although how they can contribute to the environment has gained traction, extant tourism research in this regard largely lags behind. Drawing on self-determination and self-efficacy theories, this inquiry fills this void by proposing a model that delineates a motivation–...

Why would employees fight back to reciprocate uncivil customer behaviors? This research explores employees’ revenge propensity by drawing on frustration–aggression theory. On the basis of survey data collected from hotels in Hong Kong, we examined the customer incivility–employee retaliation link through a serial mediation relationship among job de...

This study draws on the premise of value-in-the-experience (VALEX), axiology, and situated cognition to investigate how value is contextualized within a broader social system that is manifested through the service environment where the shopping experience occurs. A cross-level framework is proposed to examine how shopping value is embedded within t...

This study integrates tourists’ social interaction quality and experience with a casino brand to examine changes of tourist citizenship behavioral intentions between pre- and post-casino trips. A two-stage sampling method was deployed with data driven in the casino industry: a random sampling approach to select casino properties followed by a quota...

Heritage tourism can enable tourists to indulge in a cherished past enriched with cultural-historical treasures. This study draws on theories pertaining to social identity, psychological ownership, and self-continuity to synthesize a model concerning nostalgic heritage tourism. The hypothesized framework was assessed using structural equation model...

Customer reviews and brand equity are both key assets that offer hospitality providers competitive advantages over rivalries. However, how they can complement each other is a question that scholars and practitioners continue to seek. This research draws on social identity and social presence theories to synthesize a multilevel model with social ide...

The present investigation takes a qualitative approach to explore Airbnb's Online Experience as a new virtual tourism initiative through the lens of attention restoration theory. Data were collected from tourist reviews at Airbnb's platform with an emphasis on touring services such as sightseeing and cultural immersion sessions. Our findings first...

Cultivating high-quality internship is essential for both interns and organizations. Yet there is little understanding of how parental support impacts outcomes of internship. This research drew on career construction theory to test a conceptual model suggesting that parental support improves an intern's person–organization fit and the internship qu...

Purpose Have you been to a smart restaurant, and how were its services? A common limitation of hospitality studies stems from the lack of research on how service quality is shaped within smart technology. This study aims to fill this literature void not merely to reiterate the importance of technology but also to recast service quality through the...

The COVID-19 outbreak has accelerated the development of service robots. However, service robots in some hotels have been put aside despite successful adoption. This study thus focuses on hotel employees' inhibited continuous usage intention by examining the challenges of benefiting from service robots. A robot usage resistance model (RURM) has bee...

Purpose Hospitality managers face constant challenges in promoting hotel service principles such as innovation and flexibility to their new employees, as such knowledge is usually tacit in nature and hard to formalize. This study aims to suggest that this problem can be addressed by using a knowledge sharing group intervention. Specifically, the au...

Purpose: This study aims to move beyond the current understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to propose the concept of just-in-time (JIT) CSR as a metaphor that reflects hospitality operators’ endeavors to expedite socially responsible measures to both internal and external organizational stakeholders during times when functional and...

This study draws on life history theory to rationalize how tourism enterprises make decisions and evolve during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a case study approach, the current work improvises the house of trade-off paradox as a visual metaphoric framework that integrates three major dyadic trade-off pairs along with four organizational resource con...

The COVID-19 pandemic aftermath has aggravated its traumatic effect to engender a mental health crisis. With increasingly worsened psychological wellbeing, it is the responsibility of tourism scholars and operators alike to explore how contemporary tourism offerings can enable individuals to rebuild hope and optimism through relishing tourism's res...

In the context of the health risks of the COVID-19 pandemic, tourists’ choices have shifted to reflect a subconscious psychological mechanism – the behavioral immune system – that facilitates human organisms to better identify plausible threats to ones’ health through environment cues. This research draws upon this theoretical lens to assess touris...

The concept of atmospheric cues has been developed in environmental psychology to denote physical attractions from the natural habitat. This research adopts the idea with an application in the travel application domain. Guided by the stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) paradigm and media richness theory, we synthesize an integrated model to assess t...

This study develops a multilevel framework that connects customer-to-customer (C2C) interaction quality to brand attachment through customer experience. Two food traits-uniqueness and taste-and service quality are posited to play different roles in this link. This research contributes to the literature on the effects of food traits and service on t...

The meteoric rise in the popularity of social networking sites (SNSs) has connected many employees with their contacts from work. However, clashes are catalyzed when individuals’ professional identities collide with their social ones. This paper aims to explore hotel employees’ identity conflicts stemming from cross-boundary friendships. Building o...

Training is a vital means to continuously improve service quality. Although much literature has concentrated on the relationship between on-the-job training and job outcomes, these studies are usually static and cross-sectional in research design, which fails to capture the dynamic changes of training outcomes. This study attempted to address this...

Dining in Internet-celebrity (or micro-celebrity) restaurants is an increasingly popular indulgence. Rooted in the micro-celebrity economy research, the present study draws on self-signaling and self-determination theories to propose an integrated research framework that examines how extrinsic and intrinsic factors impact customers’ intention to re...

This study explores the determinants that predict undergraduates’ intention to adopt e-learning for studying English on the basis of the extended technology acceptance model. The survey is conducted on 199 undergraduates. Structural equation modelling is performed to evaluate the proposed hypotheses and the validity of the broadened model. The resu...

Purpose Drawing on self-determination theory and the service-profit chain, this study aims to expand the current understanding of the internal processes of internal market orientation (IMO) on an organizational commitment by investigating the interactive effect between job (task) satisfaction and internal service quality in the field of hospitality...

Health is an ultimate goal that people continue to pursue through various means including traveling. This study draws on three theoretical strands – goal-directed behavior, normative social influence, and the theory of fantasy realization – to synthesize a framework that takes personal (i.e. health consciousness) and socio-political forces (i.e. so...

This research note explores the evolutionary process of corporate crisis communication to understand how international hotel enterprises respond to the present pandemic. Corpus linguistics was used as a computer-aided approach in assessing a large collection of naturally occurring texts. Press releases from hotel corporations listed in Fortune 500...

The analysis of tourism supply chains has traditionally focused on the two-party relationships between vertical suppliers. However, since a full supply chain is composed of horizontal, vertical and diagonal suppliers, there is a gap in literature regarding the dynamics of how these triadic relationships operate within a tourism supply chain. Using...

English is not only the most widely used language in the world, but a good command of English can certainly offer an array of benefits for international travel. Drawing on the language socialization paradigm and the travel-learning perspective, this research investigates independent tourists' foreign language (i.e., English) acquisition obtained fr...

Purpose The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic response is not only devastating nations and economies across the globe but it is also severely disrupting the event industry, with government and health authorities forcing many events to be postponed or cancelled. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prospective attendees’ emotional responses...

This study investigates the roles of movie storylines and celebrity fandom on destination image. It further considers a wide range of films and their ratings at the film level as a boundary condition to demonstrate a film-level halo effect. In essence, this study examines the cross-level moderating effect of movie rating on the relationship between...

Tourists are often exposed to imagery of a destination through advertisement modalities such as texts and pictures before they visit the place. This research used an eye-tracking technique to examine the effect of spatial and modality configurations on tourist destination advertisement attention and travel intention. Drawing on multiple resource th...