Sense of Control and Belonging: How Hotel Brands Counter Consumers’ Perceived Threats During a Public Health Crisis

Xiaobo Xu, Kaigeng Li, Gaoyu Chen, Tingting Wang and JianChao Huang

SAGE Open, 2025, vol. 15, issue 2, 21582440251336831

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the tourism and hospitality industries hard, posing health risks to consumers and vastly affecting their psychology and behavior. Drawing on protection motivation theory and self-determination theory, this study investigates hotel consumers’ brand preferences between strong brands and others during the crisis and the underlying mechanisms. In Study 1, questionnaires were collected online (based on the Credamo platform) and offline (at a university in Southwest China) for analysis. In study 2, 437 valid questionnaires from China were modeled through the Credamo platform using a structural equation model. The results reveal that: (1) during the crisis, consumers show a preference for strong hotel brands; (2) individuals’ perceived severity and perceived vulnerability to the crisis positively influence their attitudes toward strong brands; and (3) the need for control and the need to belong mediate this effect. This study expands and enriches both self-determination theory and protection motivation theory, offering valuable management implications for hotel managers in formulating effective service and marketing strategies.

Keywords: perceived severity; perceived vulnerability; need for control; need to belong; brand preference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440251336831 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:15:y:2025:i:2:p:21582440251336831

DOI: 10.1177/21582440251336831

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SAGE Open
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().