Can Excluded Workers Produce Inclusive Tourism Experiences? Workplace Discrimination Among Gay Employees and Tourist Identity Safety in Ecuador

Inclusive tourism research has examined visitor-facing inclusion separately from workplace conditions under which frontline employees enact inclusive service. This separation leaves uncertainty about whether employees who experience workplace exclusion can perform inclusive service behaviors and whether such behaviors shape tourists’ perceptions. This study examined how workplace discrimination, psychological safety, identity concealment, and LGBTQ+-inclusive organizational climate are associated with inclusive service behavior among gay men employed in tourism and hospitality in Ecuador, and tested whether identity recognition and active intervention influence tourist identity safety and service equity. A sequential multimethod design combined a two-wave survey of gay men in customer-facing roles (N = 450 at Wave 1; N = 350 matched at Wave 2) and a randomized 2 × 2 video-vignette experiment with sexual- and gender-minority tourists (N = 480). Study 1 showed configurational heterogeneity in workplace discrimination. Greater discrimination was associated with lower psychological safety and greater identity concealment; psychological safety was positively associated with inclusive service behavior, whereas concealment was negatively associated with it. Study 2 showed that identity recognition and active intervention increased identity safety and service equity. Overall, the findings provide functionally and conceptually convergent evidence consistent with an inside-out framework, without establishing a complete organizational-to-customer causal chain.