When Discounts Undermine Good Intentions: Identity Salience and Symbolic Misalignment in CBT Marketing

Abstract

Community-Based Tourism (CBT) operators increasingly rely on “win–win” marketing strategies that combine pro-community appeals with direct economic incentives for tourists. While such mixed-incentive campaigns are widely assumed to broaden appeal, their effectiveness depends critically on how they are symbolically interpreted by different audiences. Drawing on signaling theory, cognitive coherence, and authenticity research, this study examines how the salience of a tourist’s moral versus deal-seeking identity shapes responses to mixed-incentive CBT promotions. Using a between-subjects experiment (N = 294), participants were primed with either a moral-identity or a deal-seeking identity before evaluating the same CBT promotion that bundled community revenue sharing with tourist discounts. Results show that identity priming does not directly affect engagement intention at the aggregate level. Instead, engagement is driven by symbolic perceptions—perceived authenticity, perceived fairness, and greenwashing suspicion. Crucially, the negative association between greenwashing suspicion and engagement is significantly stronger when a moral identity is salient. Among participants with a high ecotourism orientation, moral-identity priming is associated with lower engagement, revealing a counterintuitive backlash against mixed-incentive framing. These findings demonstrate that mixed incentives can function as symbolic contaminants rather than value enhancers when they conflict with a salient moral identity. The study contributes to tourism marketing and signaling theory by showing that the effectiveness of ethical appeals is contingent on identity-based interpretation, highlighting the limits of “one-size-fits-all” incentive strategies in sustainable tourism.