Abstract
Tour guide turnover challenges the tourism sector, highlighting the need to enhance tour guides’ career resilience to retain talent. Drawing on theory of stress and coping, we investigated the formation mechanisms and associated boundary conditions of tour guides’ career resilience during times of stress through two studies. Study 1 employed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to detect linear relationships between antecedent variables and career resilience. Results showed that deliberate (intrusive) rumination positively (negatively) impacted career resilience with self-leadership serving as a mediator. Perceived environmental uncertainty moderated rumination’s impact on self-leadership, and family support moderated self-leadership’s effect on career resilience. Study 2 utilized fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to gain deeper insights into self-leadership and uncover how its various dimensions contribute to career resilience in a nonlinear manner. Results revealed three configurations critical to career resilience, with constructive cognition being essential. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in closing.