The Influence of Homestay Relation Marketing on Customer Citizenship Behavior: The Mediating Effect of Relation Quality and the Moderating Effect of Motivation Attribution

Abstract

As an emerging form of accommodation in the leisure and vacation era, the relation marketing of homestays is an important factor in promoting a good relation between hosts and guests and stimulating the citizenship behavior of customers. Customer citizenship behavior is necessary to enhance the customer travel experience and promote the high-quality development of the homestay industry. Stimulating customer citizenship through relation marketing is an important scientific issue that needs to be addressed for the high-quality development of homestays. Based on social exchange theory and attribution theory, this study analyzes the relation between homestay staff and customers and refines the two-dimensional structure of homestay customer citizenship behavior, confirming the mediating effect of relation quality on the influence of relation marketing on helping behavior and deepening the understanding of the moderating effect of motivational attribution on the influence of relation marketing on customer citizenship behavior. The influence mechanism of customer citizenship behavior was clarified. The research results show that customer citizenship behavior in the homestay context consists of two dimensions: helping behavior and tolerant behavior, indicating that the structure of customer citizenship behavior in different contexts is still different. Second, the main effects of relation marketing on relation quality and customer citizenship behavior are significant. That is, a homestay can improve the quality of its relation with customers through instrumental behaviors, such as information communication, and emotional behaviors, such as human investment. Customer citizenship behavior is an important behavioral response to relation marketing. Third, relation quality mediates the relation between marketing and helping behavior, indicating that relation marketing promotes customer trust in homestays and understanding the reciprocity of behavior, which in turn promotes customer helping behavior. Fourth, motivational attribution has a moderating effect on the influence of relation marketing on tolerant behavior. This shows that in altruistic motive attribution, the more customers perceive relation marketing, the more they can feel the good experience brought about by homestay staff, so they voluntarily adopt tolerant behavior in the face of service failure, based on the principle of reciprocity in social exchange theory. This study combines the social exchange and attribution theories to explain the mechanism of customer citizenship behavior in the context of homestay services. While enriching the research content of high-quality development of homestay, it constructs a discourse system with more"relation" characteristics for tourism marketing, broadens the tourism application scenarios of relation marketing theory in practice, helps homestay maintain a good relation between host and client, stimulates customer citizenship behavior, and contributes to the development of homestay tourism services and products.

Keywords

• homestay
• relation marketing
• relation quality
• customer citizenship behavior
• motivational attribution