What drives Muslims to boycott Israeli brands? The mediating role of religious enrichment: evidence from coastal tourism destinations

Purpose This study aims to investigate drivers influencing Muslims to boycott Israel brands through the extension of theory of reasoned action (TRA), incorporating religious motivations, animosity to Israel and religious enrichment with TRA’s predictive constructs for predicting Israel brands boycott intentions in the context of coastal tourism destinations in Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach Based on reviews of literature and personal interviews, this study has been conducted by collecting primary data, which is subsequently analyzed by using principal component analysis technique with the Promax rotation method and partial least squares structural equation modeling through using Smart PLS 3.3.3. Findings The results of this study reveal that religious motivations significantly affect attitude and animosity to Israel, attitude has significant influence on Israel brands boycott intention and religious enrichment, subjective norms significantly influence Israel brands boycott intention and religious enrichment, animosity to Israel significantly affects Israel brands boycott intention and religious enrichment significantly affects Israel brands boycott intention. Moreover, religious enrichment partially mediates the relationships between attitude, subjective norms and Israel brands boycott intention. Practical implications This study offers several unique policy implications for industry operators so that coastal tourism industry operators (i.e. hoteliers and restaurant operators) can attract more Muslim tourists by exerting that boycotting Israeli brands helps satisfy the Muslim’s spiritual desire and adopting policies i.e. hanging Islamic religious words on their hotels’ and restaurants’ walls and refraining from selling Israeli brands. Originality/value This is one of the first studies, which uniquely explains the distinction between religious motivations (i.e. psychological drivers for what people are engaged into acting religious behaviors) and religious enrichment (i.e. consequences/outcomes for what people integrate themselves into spiritual practices) and conceptualizes a theoretical framework by integrating religious motivations, attitude, subjective norms, animosity to Israel and religious motivations to explain Muslims’ Israel brands boycott intention.