ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1492283
This article is part of the Research TopicRegenerative Tourism and WellbeingView all articles
Social Expectations or Self-Regulation? --Study on Tourists' Comity Behavior in Taking Photos
Provisionally accepted
- 1Xi'an International Studies University, Xi'an, China
- 2Xinjiang University of Finance and Economics, Ürümqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Region, China
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During travel, photos not only capture beautiful moments but also serve as a visual narrative and evoke emotional resonance. However, in crowded tourist scenes, achieving a satisfactory photo often relies on mutual cooperation and courtesy among tourists. This paper explores tourists' courteous behavior in photo-taking through normative activation theory, examining social and individual norms. Key findings are: (1) Both social and individual norms positively influence courteous behavior, with individual norms having a greater impact; (2) Impression management motivation mediates the relationship between norms and courtesy; (3) Proactive personality moderates the link between individual norms and impression management, but not between social norms and impression management. This study provides a new framework for understanding the connection between norms and courteous behavior, expanding the application of normative activation and impression management theories, and offers practical insights for tourism management to encourage civilized behavior.
Keywords: social norms, Individual norms, courteous behavior in photography, Impression management motivation, proactive personality
Received: 06 Sep 2024; Accepted: 30 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Duan, Chen and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhaowen Duan, Xi'an International Studies University, Xi'an, China
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