Tourists’ emotional solidarity with residents: A segmentation analysis and its links to destination image and loyalty

Abstract: It is nearly impossible to consider a destination without also acknowledging its people and the relationships visitors have with such residents. Extant research on emotional solidarity has treated visitors as a homogenous group, failing to identify differences in the way people develop solidarity and perceive a destination. This study addresses this gap by clustering tourists based on their emotional solidarity with residents; and identifying whether tourist subgroups share different perceptions of the destination and levels of loyalty. Analysis was based on a sample of 400 Serbian visitors who had visited Greece. Three groups were identified with different levels of emotional solidarity, termed Appreciators, Lovers, and Emotionally Distants. All groups exhibited dissimilar cognitive and affective images and diverse levels of loyalty.