Influencing mechanism of tourist social responsibility awareness on environmentally responsible behavior

Abstract

Fostering tourist environmentally responsible behavior is critical for sustainable destination management, pertinent to both rural and urban settings. Tourist negative impact perception and social responsibility awareness are identified as important factors in shaping tourist environmental behavior. However, the influencing mechanism is not yet fully understood. Taking Yuelu Mountain, a key tourism attraction in Changsha City, Hunan Province of China, as an example, this study explores the influencing mechanisms of tourist negative impact perception, the self and public dimensions of social responsibility awareness on the complying and promoting environmentally responsible behaviors. On site tourist questionnaires were collected and the structural equation model was used to empirically test the proposed theoretical framework. Results suggest that negative impact perception (NIP) has a direct and significant positive effect on public responsibility awareness (PRA). The latter demonstrates a significant positive impact on complying environmentally responsible behavior (CERB) and promoting environmentally responsible behavior (PERB). Public responsibility awareness (PRA) is found to play an important intermediary role between negative impact perception (NEP), self responsibility awareness (SRA) and environmentally responsible behavior (ERB). Accordingly, suggestions for managing and promoting tourist environmentally responsible behavior are proposed for Yuelu Mountain. Management implications are then extended to other destinations at a broader context.