The unprecedented COVID-19 has led to the collapse of numerous businesses, notably within the tourism and hospitality sectors. Despite the burgeoning research on resilience, few studies have embraced a theoretical lens, particularly from a social network perspective. In addition, most extant resilience studies have not explicitly considered the geographic accessibility prerequisite inherent to tourism and hospitality products. In this study, leveraging the social contagion theory, we present a holistic research framework to investigate the influence of geographic and social proximities, two pivotal social contagion mechanisms, on business resilience. We also delve into moderating factors to discern the conditions under which contagion effects are amplified or attenuated. To validate our theoretical model, we select the restaurant industry as our research context, given its severe impact from COVID-19. Utilizing an extensive dataset from Yelp, encompassing ten U.S. cities varying in sizes and geolocations, our findings indicate that both geographic and social influences exert significant direct effects on resilience. Additionally, these effects exhibit considerable variations contingent upon product attributes, customer characteristics, and geographic factors. Theoretically, we are the first to substantiate the role of social contagion theory in examining resilience, enriching our understanding of the social network mechanism of behavioral contagion among customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also offer valuable practical implications for various stakeholders in supporting their management strategies and decision-making in developing effective plans and preparations, minimizing adverse impacts, and ensuring sustainability in the face of future disruptions.

中文翻译：

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商业弹性中的社会传染：来自美国餐饮业在 COVID-19 大流行中的证据


史无前例的 COVID-19 导致众多企业倒闭，尤其是旅游和酒店业。尽管关于复原力的研究蓬勃发展，但很少有研究采用理论视角，特别是从社交网络的角度来看。此外，大多数现有的复原力研究并未明确考虑旅游和酒店产品固有的地理可达性先决条件。在本研究中，利用社会传染理论，我们提出了一个整体研究框架，以调查地理和社会邻近性这两种关键的社会传染机制对企业弹性的影响。我们还深入研究调节因素，以确定传染效应放大或减弱的条件。为了验证我们的理论模型，考虑到 COVID-19 的严重影响，我们选择餐饮业作为我们的研究背景。利用 Yelp 的广泛数据集（涵盖规模和地理位置不同的十个美国城市），我们的研究结果表明，地理和社会影响对弹性都有显着的直接影响。此外，这些影响根据产品属性、客户特征和地理因素而表现出相当大的变化。从理论上讲，我们是第一个证实社会传染理论在检验弹性方面的作用的人，丰富了我们对COVID-19大流行期间客户行为传染的社交网络机制的理解。我们还为各利益相关者提供宝贵的实际意义，以支持他们的管理战略和决策，制定有效的计划和准备，最大限度地减少不利影响，并确保面对未来破坏的可持续性。