Recently, the latest research by Professor Sun Ping’s team at the School of Management, Shandong University, titled “Can talented tour guides truly not be retained? Exploring the development of tour guides’ career resilience under stressful conditions”, was published online in the international journal Tourism Management. Recognized as a leading academic journal in the field of tourism, Tourism Management is listed in SSCI Q1 with an impact factor of 10.9, and is rated as a 4-star journal by ABS. Professor Sun Ping is the first author, Lv Mingxuan, a master’s student at the School of Management, is the second author, and Dr. Liu Hongbo, Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey, is the corresponding author.
In recent years, tour guide turnover challenges the tourism sector, highlighting the need to enhance tour guides' career resilience to retain talent. Tour guide turnover is primarily driven by multiple pressures, and different modes of thinking under stress may influence tour guides' career choices. Career resilience plays a key role in mitigating stress, solving problems, and coping with adversity. The study broke through the current competency-based research on resilience by responding to the research paradigm that frames resilience as a process. Drawing on theory of stress and coping, the study integrated PLS-SEM and fsQCA methods to explore the formation mechanisms and boundary conditions of tour guides’ career resilience under stressful conditions.
The PLS-SEM analysis confirms that different types of rumination impact career resilience: reflective rumination positively influences career resilience, while intrusive rumination has a negative effect. Self-leadership mediates this relationship. Additionally, perceived environmental uncertainty moderates the effect of rumination on self-leadership, while family support moderates the impact of self-leadership on career resilience. Furthermore, the fsQCA analysis identifies three configurational paths leading to high levels of career resilience, highlighting, for the first time, the critical role of constructive cognition among the three dimensions of self-leadership. This study provided theoretical and practical insights for enhancing tour guides’ career resilience, alleviating their stress, and improving talent retention in the industry.
The study was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (Grant Number: ZR2023MG024).
Sun Ping is a professor at the School of Management, Shandong University, Secretary of the Faculty Party Branch of the Department of Culture and Tourism, and Vice Dean of the Tourism Industry Research Institute at Shandong University. Her research interests include tourism enterprise management, entrepreneurship and brand marketing, and emerging tourism formats (e.g., study tours, rural tourism). She has presided over multiple projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Education’s Humanities and Social Sciences Fund, the Shandong Provincial Social Science Fund, and the Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation. Her research has been published in SSCI journals such as Tourism Management and Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, as well as CSSCI journals including Nankai Business Review, Tourism Tribune, and Chinese Journal of Management. Several of her policy reports have been adopted by the General Office of the State Council, the Ministry of Education, and other relevant departments, receiving directives from central leadership and the then-Secretary of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee. She led the development of Shandong University’s rural tourism guidance center, "Sanling Courtyard", which was recognized as an Outstanding National Education Case by Xinhua News Agency in 2024 and featured in reports by the Ministry of Education, Dazhong News, and other media outlets.
Lv Mingxuan is a master’s student at the School of Management, Shandong University. Her research interests include tourism human resource management and tourism marketing.
