What makes customer participation a double-edged sword: The impact and factors of self-serving bias in agritourism
Introduction
Agritourism literally means agricultural-tourism. It has been widely recognized that agritourism satisfies unique needs of urban citizens for leisure or recreation that emerge from the disconnection with agriculture on the one hand (Dubois & Schmitz, 2013; Yu, Zhou, Cao, Hu, & Jin, 2014); and brings farmers additional income, and even promotes the rural economy on the other (Ciolac et al., 2020; Potočnik-Slavič & Schmitz, 2013; Wojcieszak-Zbierska, Jęczmyk, Zawadka, & Uglis, 2020; Zhang, Wang, & Liu, 2011). Although there is no unified definition of agritourism (Potočnik-Slavič & Schmitz, 2013), being closely connected to agricultural activities in an agricultural setting is always a unique characteristic of agritourism (Arroyo, Barbieri, & Rich, 2013; Ciervo, 2013; Sznajder, Przezborska, & Scrimgeour, 2009). Therefore, only tourism activities that link to ongoing farming practices or farmers’ lifestyle can be considered as agritourism (Streifeneder, 2016). As most agritourism activities require personal participation of customers, it would be the best if customer participation (CP) is advantageous to the operation of agritourism.
However, whereas most research showed positive effects of CP on additional value of products and services (Ennew & Binks, 1996; Fang, 2004), customer satisfaction (Youngdahl & Kellogg, 1997), word-of-mouth (File, Judd, & Prince, 1992; Zhang & Chen, 2017) and repurchase (Cermak, File, & Prince, 1994; Ennew & Binks, 1999; Eisingerich & Bell, 2006), several studies also supported that CP could compromise post-purchase behaviors of customers (Bendapudi & Leone, 2003; Hsieh & Yen, 2005; Zhang et al., 2011; Zhang & Pan, 2018). One potential reason of such controversial relationships between CP and post-purchase behaviors could be the existence of self-serving bias (SSB) that makes customers who participate tend to take more credits, but less responsibility than they should. Such impact of the SSB could be manifested in a negative moderating effect of the outcome on the effects of CP on post-purchase behaviors.
Evidence of the SSB in CP has been found in several studies. For examples, the positive effect of CP on customers' satisfaction toward the company goes down as customers' satisfaction toward their participation goes up (Wen, Yang, & Zhou, 2017); and comparing to not CP, CP decreases customers’ satisfaction, given the outcome of better quality than expected (Bendapudi & Leone, 2003). However, former research neither examined the impact of SSB in the relationships between the level of CP and multiple different post-purchase behaviors, nor considered the connection between the outcome and CP (or the level of CP) itself. Moreover, CP could possess unique features in agritourism, which could make differences in the potential impact of SSB. Therefore, the question that remains to be answered would be whether the SSB exerts such significant impact in agritourism that could alter the effects of the level of CP on post-purchase behaviors, and a following question would be what factors could weaken such impact of SSB in agritourism.
This research aims to explain the controversial effects of the level of CP on post-purchase behaviors in agritourism by examining the impact of SSB, and explore potential factors that may weaken such impact in agritourism. To be specific, this study tests the moderating effect of the outcome on the effects of the level of CP on three post-purchase behaviors to investigate the impact of SSB, taking the connection between CP and the outcome into consideration; and tests the moderating effects of completeness and continuity of agritourism activities on the moderating effect of the outcome to investigate their weakening effects on the impact of SSB in different situations. This research is expected to deepen the understanding of consumer behaviors in agritourism by scholars and marketers, and be helpful for agritourism farms in managing the participation and post-purchase behaviors of customers.
The contribution of this study is threefold. First, with the causal relationship between CP and the outcome considered and confirmed, the effects of the level of CP on three post-purchase behaviors in agritourism are found to be positive, but under significant negative moderating effect of the outcome, because of the SSB. Second, based on the feature of fragmentary of CP in agritourism, the completeness and continuity of activities are found to weaken the impact of SSB. Third, by comparing with one another, the weakening effects of completeness and continuity are found to be inconsistent across different outcomes and relationships between CP and three post-purchase behaviors. Research findings have implications for not only agritourism, but also destination marketing and management in general. In following texts, variables were defined, and hypotheses suggested in the research framework; then method of data collection and statistical analyses were introduced; and theoretical and managerial implications were discussed based on empirical findings.
Section snippets
Customer participation in agritourism
CP was defined as the extent to which customers provide effort, time, information and co-production as resources in the process of value co-creation and delivery (Auh, Bell, McLeod, & Shih, 2007; Bolton & Saxena-Iyer, 2009; Cermak et al., 1994; Hsieh & Yen, 2005; Silpakit & Fisk, 1985). However, CP shows different characteristics in different industries and businesses (Youngdahl & Kellogg, 1997). The innate close connection of agritourism with agriculture differentiates it from other tourism
Procedure
Cross-sectional data were collected in Hubei province, China in June 2019, with the support of a professional Chinese online survey platform. Specifically, structured questionnaires were built to avoid interpretive bias, and they were sent out with a simple random sampling through emails and social networking platforms. Interviewees were first asked to recall and report their consumption experience(s) of agritourism, and all valid samples come from customers who have actually visited
The impact of SSB
Results of the SEM (Table 2) showed significant and positive main effects of CP on customer satisfaction (B = 0.814, p<0.001), word-of-mouth (B = 1.042, p<0.001) and revisit intention (B = 23.963, p<0.001). Therefore, H1 was supported. Meanwhile, the effect of CP on the outcome turned out to be significantly positive (B = 0.402, p<0.001), which confirmed the causal relationship between them. However, the interaction term of CP and the outcome exerted negative effects to customer satisfaction (B
Discussions
Results of this research are logically consistent with the previous research, but are deeper and more specific. Bendapudi and Leone (2003) discovered that given an outcome better than expected, CP at any level would decrease customer satisfaction, comparing to not CP at all. Here it shows that as the outcome gets better and better, the total effects of the level of CP on all three post-purchase behaviors in agritourism would become insignificant and negative, and there is a causal relationship
Conclusions
As indispensable in agritourism, CP could be either advantageous or disadvantageous to its operation, because of the existence of SSB. With a series of empirical analyses using survey data, this research investigated the impact of SSB in the relationships between the level of CP and three post-purchase behaviors in agritourism, taking the connection between CP and the outcome into consideration, and explored the completeness and continuity of agritourism activities as potential factors that
Author statement
Shiqi Li: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Software; Investigation; Methodology; Validation; Visualization; Writing – original draft; Writing – review & editing. Chongguang Li: Funding acquisition; Project administration; Resources; Supervision.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 71673103].
Declaration of competing interest
None.
Shiqi Li is a lecturer in Hubei University, with his PhD in SMEs Management obtained from Huazhong Agricultural University, China in 2020, and his MSc in Marketing Management obtained from University of Southampton, UK in 2015. His research interests include the consumer behavior and experience marketing.
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Shiqi Li is a lecturer in Hubei University, with his PhD in SMEs Management obtained from Huazhong Agricultural University, China in 2020, and his MSc in Marketing Management obtained from University of Southampton, UK in 2015. His research interests include the consumer behavior and experience marketing.
Chongguang Li is a professor, with a PhD in Agricultural Economics and Management from Huazhong Agricultural University, China. He has studied in Iowa State University in 1998 and the University Of Queensland from 2006 to 2007 as a visiting scholar. He has presided over a number of national science and technology projects and provincial/ministerial level major projects, and been entitled with the State Council Special Allowance. His main research interests involve urban-rural economic development, agricultural trade and agricultural products marketing.