Do tour guides leave their jobs because of occupational stigma?
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Cite this article:
He, Z., Cheng, B., & Chen, L.
(2025). Do tour guides leave their jobs because of occupational stigma?.
Social Behavior and Personality: An international journal,
53(1),
e13993.
Abstract
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We explored the effect of occupational stigma on tour guides’ turnover intention, basing our research on conservation of resources theory. Our sample comprised 462 tour guides, who completed an online survey assessing their perception of occupational stigma, turnover intention, emotional exhaustion, and job crafting. Results indicated that perceived occupational stigma positively predicted both intention to leave and emotional exhaustion levels; furthermore, emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between occupational stigma and turnover intention, while job crafting negatively moderated the influence of occupational stigma on emotional exhaustion. Thus, high job crafting can alleviate the emotional exhaustion caused by occupational stigma. These findings expand and enrich the literature related to occupational stigma and provide practical implications for related management practice.
Article Highlights
- Tour guides’ occupational stigma perception was found to positively affect their turnover intention, with a higher level of perceived occupational stigma being associated with a stronger turnover intention.
- Emotional exhaustion played a mediating role between occupational stigma and turnover intention.
- Job crafting played a moderating role in the process of occupational stigma influencing emotional exhaustion.
In recent years negative tourism incidents have appeared in various media channels, labeling tour guides and other tourism practitioners as bad, dirty, and unethical (Wang, 2022). The dissemination of news and information greatly influences the objective judgment of the public and provides an environment for stigmatization (J. Wen & Luo, 2014). Some media channels have even openly mocked tourism practitioners (Shantz & Booth, 2014; Wildes, 2007). Due to occupational stigma, the tour-guide industry has a low level of professional recognition and a high turnover rate, which constrains the sustainable development of the tourism industry (Wang, 2022). Therefore, exploring effective strategies to cope with occupational stigma and putting forward relevant management suggestions on this basis are of great significance in stabilizing the tourism workforce, enhancing their occupational identity, and promoting the high-quality development of the tourism industry.
Turnover intention has a strong predictive effect on the exit behavior of employees; therefore, organizations pay a lot of attention to the willingness of employees to leave, and adopt various measures to retain employees and reduce the rate of turnover in order to strengthen the organization’s human resource management (Bai, 2010). Wildes (2005) found that restaurant servers between the ages of 18 and 35 years had the highest levels of perceived occupational stigma, and that those with higher levels of occupational stigma were more likely to show a stronger desire to leave their job. Occupational stigma negatively affects practitioners’ work engagement and positively affects their willingness to leave (Barbier et al., 2013). Applying the relational stress perspective, Lai et al. (2021) analyzed the impact of occupational stigma in tourism and concluded that this stigma directly and positively influenced the willingness to leave a job in tourism. Therefore, this study proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Occupational stigma will be positively associated with tour guides’ turnover intention.
Conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 2001) suggests that individuals are motivated to conserve, protect, and acquire resources. Specifically, people have limited physiological and psychological resources with which to deal with work-related activities and demands, and when these resources are depleted, employees may perceive additional work events and work conditions as stressors, resulting in higher levels of psychological stress and emotional depletion (Hobfoll, 2001). Persistent occupational stigma causes individuals to deplete their individual resources without timely and effective replenishment, which will eventually lead to emotional exhaustion (Wei, 2018) and job stress (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002). Perceived social isolation prevents the development of defense mechanisms against occupational stigma, increasing individuals’ perception of occupational stigma and decreasing their perception of the prosocial impact of their work, which, in turn, leads to emotional exhaustion and reduced work engagement (Bentein et al., 2017). Therefore, this study proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2: Occupational stigma will be positively associated with emotional exhaustion.
When employees need to consume a large amount of emotional resources in their work and cannot obtain timely and effective replenishment, they will experience emotional exhaustion (C. Li & Shi, 2003). Stress occurs when employees become aware that their resources are being or will soon be depleted, which triggers a range of negative attitudes and behaviors, including an increased willingness to leave their job (Zhen et al., 2012). Surface acting has been found to trigger employees’ willingness to leave, with emotional exhaustion mediating this relationship (Zhao & Xi, 2017). T. Wen and Liang (2020) found that customer bullying behaviors increased tour guides’ turnover intention, with emotional depletion mediating the relationship between these variables. Therefore, this study proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 3: Emotional exhaustion will be positively associated with turnover intention.
Synthesizing the logic of Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3, we can assume that occupational stigma will trigger the depletion of tour guides’ emotional resources without allowing for timely and effective replenishment, leading to emotional depletion and ultimately increasing their turnover intention. Therefore, we proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 4: Emotional exhaustion will mediate the positive association between occupational stigma and turnover intention.
Research has shown that employees mitigate the negative effects of dirty work (i.e., occupations that physically, socially, or morally stigmatized by society) by adopting coping strategies (Wong et al., 2011). Job crafting is the process by which employees, because of changes and pressures in the external environment, actively and proactively change the content of their work according to their own abilities, preferences, and needs, including internalizing and absorbing occupational stigmas, and ceasing to consume excessive resources to respond positively to external stigmatizing pressures (Wildes, 2007). Jiang (2020) investigated a group of nurses and found that they actively adopted a positive work-remodeling approach to reduce the negative impact of dirty-work perceptions on emotional exhaustion. Therefore, we proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 5: Job crafting will moderate the relationship between occupational stigma and emotional exhaustion, such that the relationship will be stronger when job crafting is low and weaker when job crafting is high.
Conservation of resources theory holds that individuals will try their best to obtain, maintain, and protect their own resources, and will regard the loss of these resources as a threat. At the same time, individuals will actively maintain and protect their own resources in order to reduce future resource loss (Hobfoll, 1989). Synthesizing Hypotheses 4 and 5, we anticipated that job crafting would regulate not only the relationship between occupational stigma and emotional exhaustion, but also the mediating role of emotional exhaustion in the link between occupational stigma and turnover intention, thus forming a moderated mediating effect. Job crafting can help to reduce employees’ turnover intention (Wildes, 2007). The higher the level of proactive job crafting, the smaller is the impact of dirty-work perception on turnover intention (Jiang, 2020). Therefore, this study proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 6: Job crafting will moderate the mediating role of emotional exhaustion in the link between occupational stigma and turnover intention, such that this relationship will be weaker when job crafting is high rather than low.
The research model is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Research Model
Method
Participants and Procedure
This study was approved by a local Research Ethics Review Committee and participants provided written informed consent to take part. Since the study was directed toward tour guides, we used convenience sampling to recruit the participants through an online platform. Between January and July 2023, 509 questionnaires were returned. The following criteria were used to exclude invalid questionnaires: (a) all items had been assigned the same response and (b) the response to the reverse-scored item was logically contradictory to the participant’s answers to the other items. After excluding 37 invalid surveys, there were 462 (137 men and 325 women) valid responses, representing a rate of return of 92.7%. Table 1 presents the demographic details of the sample.
Measures
The measurement items were adapted to fit the occupational characteristics of tour guides. We used the Perceived Occupational Stigma Scale (Shantz & Booth, 2014), the Emotional Exhaustion Scale (Watkins et al., 2015), the Turnover Intention Scale (Scott et al., 1999), and the Job-Crafting Scale (Tims et al., 2012). All items were rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). To ensure accuracy of the measures, the reference items were first translated from English into Chinese, then two doctoral degree holders with an overseas study background were asked to translate the items back into English. Finally, their opinions were summarized and sorted to determine the content of each item.
Data Analysis
We used SPSS 21.0 and Amos 23.0 to analyze the relationships among the focal variables.
Table 1. Demographic Details of Research Sample
Note. N = 462.
Results
Reliability and Validity
Table 2 shows that the composite reliabilities of all the variables ranged between .76 and .86, where values above .60 indicate good reliability (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988). The average variance extracted of all the variables ranged between .51 and .69; values above .50 indicate good convergent validity (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988; Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Cronbach’s alpha values were greater than the standard cut-off of .70 (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). The factor loadings of all constructs were greater than .50, suggesting acceptable construct validity (Fornell & Larcker, 1981).
Table 2. Factor Loadings, Reliability, and Validity Tests
Note. AVE = average variance extracted; CR = composite reliability.
As shown in Table 3, the three-factor, two-factor, and one-factor models showed a poorer fit to the data compared to the four-factor model (occupational stigma, turnover intention, emotional exhaustion, job crafting), χ²/df = 2.21, root-mean-square error of approximation = .06, Tucker–Lewis index = .90, comparative fit index = .92. Therefore, the scales used in this study had good discriminant validity.
Table 3. Confirmatory Factor Analysis Results
Note. N = 462. RMSEA = root-mean-square error of approximation; TLI = Tucker–Lewis index; CFI = comparative fit index.
a Occupational stigma, Turnover intention, Emotional exhaustion, Job crafting; b Occupational stigma + Emotional exhaustion, Turnover intention, Job crafting; c Occupational stigma + Job crafting, Turnover intention + Emotional exhaustion; d Occupational stigma + Turnover intention + Emotional exhaustion + Job crafting.
Table 4 presents the descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients, and internal consistency coefficients for the study variables. The correlations between the variables were consistent with our theoretical expectations.
Table 4. Correlation Analysis Results
Note. ** p < .01.
Hypothesis Testing
The main and mediating effects were validated with reference to Baron and Kenny’s (1986) research methodology. We carried out a regression analysis after controlling for the demographic variables of gender, age, level of education, marital status, and years of working as a tour guide. The results are shown in Table 5. Occupational stigma significantly and positively predicted turnover intention, supporting Hypothesis 1. Occupational stigma significantly and positively predicted emotional exhaustion, supporting Hypothesis 2. Further, occupational stigma significantly influenced turnover intention, and emotional exhaustion positively and significantly predicted turnover intention, suggesting that emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between occupational stigma and turnover intention, thus supporting Hypotheses 3 and 4.
Table 5. Regression Analysis Results
Note. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.
Model 6 in Table 6 shows the effect of occupational stigma on emotional exhaustion, as explored earlier. The effect of both occupational stigma and job crafting on emotional exhaustion were incorporated into Model 7. The simultaneous inclusion of occupational stigma, job crafting, and their interaction term in Model 8 resulted in a significant regression coefficient of the interaction term. Thus, job crafting had a moderating effect on the link between occupational stigma and emotional exhaustion, supporting Hypothesis 5.
Table 6. Analysis of the Moderating Effect of Job Crafting
Note. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.
To test the indirect effect of occupational stigma on turnover intention under different job-crafting conditions, we conducted a bootstrapping analysis with 5,000 resamples, and obtained unstandardized path coefficients of the indirect effects under the two conditions of low and high job crafting. The results in Table 7 show that the indirect effect of emotional exhaustion decreased with an increase in job crafting, supporting Hypothesis 6.
Table 7. Results of Mediating Effect Analysis With Adjustment
Note. CI = confidence interval; LL = lower limit; UL = upper limit.
To clearly show the moderating effect of job crafting on the relationship between occupational stigma and emotional exhaustion, we compared the values for two groups: high job crafting (M + 1 SD) and low job crafting (M − 1 SD). The results in Figure 2 show that job crafting significantly moderated the effect of perceived occupational stigma on emotional exhaustion.
Figure 2. The Moderating Effect of Job Crafting on the Relationship Between Occupational Stigma and Emotional Exhaustion
Discussion
The main purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between professional stigma and turnover intention in tour guides, and to examine whether emotional exhaustion acts as a mediator and whether job crafting acts as a moderator. This study makes several noteworthy contributions to the existing research in these fields.
First, our results show that occupational stigma had a significant positive predictive effect on the turnover intention of tour guides. This is consistent with the research findings of Barbier et al. (2013), Wildes (2005), and Zhen et al. (2012). When tour guides encounter occupational stigma that cannot be alleviated, it will lead to high emotional exhaustion and high turnover intention.
We also found that emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between occupational stigma and turnover intention, which is consistent with the findings of Wen and Liang (2020). Individuals need to consume a large amount of emotional resources to cope with the pressure induced by occupational stigma. According to conservation of resources theory, a sense of stress occurs when employees become aware that their resources are being or will soon be depleted, and if these resources are not replenished in a timely manner it triggers a range of negative attitudes and behaviors, including increased turnover intention. The research results of this paper expand understanding of emotional exhaustion as a mediator of the link between occupational stigma and turnover intention.
Finally, by applying conservation of resources theory, we found that job crafting played a moderating role in the impact of occupational stigma on emotional exhaustion, which is consistent with the research findings of Jiang (2020). When occupational stigma is encountered, job crafting can allow employees to obtain helpful resources and mitigate the impact on emotional exhaustion. The effect of occupational stigma on emotional exhaustion is weaker when job crafting is higher; conversely, occupational stigma has a stronger effect on emotional exhaustion when job crafting is lower.
The results of this article provide practical insights for tourism organizations and the career management of employees. For organizations, strengthening the standardized management of the tourism market and improving the social security and income structure of tour guides may help to reduce the occupational stigma of tour guides (P. Li, 2022). This will not only reduce employees’ emotional exhaustion, but will also reduce turnover among tour guides. Further, individual tour guides could independently design their own work tasks and obtain resources by reshaping and improving their current job, in order to reduce the negative impact of occupational stigma. If turnover can be reduced, it will be a win–win result for both the organization and individual employees.
Although this study provides various insights, there are certain limitations that can be addressed in future research. First, the questionnaire we used was borrowed from well-established scales not designed for the tour-guide group. There are differences in the attributes of various occupations, although all occupations have the characteristic potential for stigmatization. Therefore, new scales for assessing the relevant variables could be designed specifically for the tour-guide group in subsequent studies. Second, this paper focused on tour guides in individual provinces of China and the results may not fully represent the situation of tour guides across the country. The geographical scope of the research sample can be broadened in subsequent studies to further understanding of tour guides’ occupational stigma and their ways of coping with it.
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Figure 1. Research Model
Table 1. Demographic Details of Research Sample
Note. N = 462.
Table 2. Factor Loadings, Reliability, and Validity Tests
Note. AVE = average variance extracted; CR = composite reliability.
Table 3. Confirmatory Factor Analysis Results
Note. N = 462. RMSEA = root-mean-square error of approximation; TLI = Tucker–Lewis index; CFI = comparative fit index.
a Occupational stigma, Turnover intention, Emotional exhaustion, Job crafting; b Occupational stigma + Emotional exhaustion, Turnover intention, Job crafting; c Occupational stigma + Job crafting, Turnover intention + Emotional exhaustion; d Occupational stigma + Turnover intention + Emotional exhaustion + Job crafting.
Table 4. Correlation Analysis Results
Note. ** p < .01.
Table 5. Regression Analysis Results
Note. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.
Table 6. Analysis of the Moderating Effect of Job Crafting
Note. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.
Table 7. Results of Mediating Effect Analysis With Adjustment
Note. CI = confidence interval; LL = lower limit; UL = upper limit.
Figure 2. The Moderating Effect of Job Crafting on the Relationship Between Occupational Stigma and Emotional Exhaustion
Zhenhua He and Lifeng Chen were responsible for research conceptualization. Zhenhua He was responsible for methodology, acquisition of resources, original draft preparation, data visualization, and supervision. Bin Cheng conducted the formal analysis and investigation. Lifeng Chen was responsible for software analysis, data curation, review and editing of the manuscript, and project administration. Zhenhua He, Bin Cheng, and Lifeng Chen conducted the data validation. All authors read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.
This work was supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project (No. 24SSHZ015YB), and the Hangzhou Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project (No. 24JD055).
Lifeng Chen, School of Economics and Management, Wenzhou University of Technology, Wenzhou, 325000, People's Republic of China. Email: [email protected]
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