Relationship quality and exhibitors' sustainable willingness to participate in exhibitions: A sociocultural perspective

Pengfei Wang; Liuke Liang; Yu Pan; Yu Wang; Linna Li; Yanyan Chen; Yihan Tian

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.949625

Relationship quality and exhibitors' sustainable willingness to participate in exhibitions: A sociocultural perspective

Front Psychol. 2022 Aug 24:13:949625. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.949625. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Pengfei Wang^{1

2}, Liuke Liang^{1

2}, Yu Pan³, Yu Wang⁴, Linna Li⁵, Yanyan Chen¹, Yihan Tian⁶

Affiliations

¹ School of Land and Tourism, Luoyang Normal University, Luoyang, China.
² School of Geography and Environment, Henan University, Kaifeng, China.
³ School of Business, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China.
⁴ School of Economics and Management, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot, China.
⁵ School of Business, Central South University, Changsha, China.
⁶ School of Accounting and Finance, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.

Abstract

Exhibition is a new economic business form in China. From a stakeholder perspective, all important roles in the context of hospitality and tourism are talents. From a socio-cultural perspective, interpersonal relationship quality plays a vital role in business and industrial operations. This constructs a causal model of relationship quality between exhibitors and exhibition organizers, and examined its influence on exhibitors' willingness to sustainably participate in exhibitions. Data collected from a total of 251 exhibitors from 4 nation-representative exhibitions in Beijing were analyzed. The results found that the four antecedent variables-guanxi (as distinctive from relationship quality), service quality, communication, and exhibition effectiveness-have significant impacts on the relationship quality between exhibitors and exhibition organizers, which in turn, affect exhibitors' willingness to participate in subsequent exhibitions (i.e., exhibitor loyalty). These findings provide a theoretical basis and policy recommendations talent management in exhibition context.

Keywords: China; exhibitors; guanxi; relationship quality; willingness in sustainable participation.