Study on the impact of tourism quality perception on tourists’ environmentally responsible behaviour in rural tourism areas

Abstract

Most of existing research on tourists’ environmentally responsible behaviour (ERB) focused on natural tourism and eco-tourism, but there is little research result on rural tourism. This paper constructs a structural equation model with satisfaction as a mediating variable to study the impact mechanism of tourism quality perception (TQP) on tourists’ ERB in rural tourism areas. Through exploratory factor analysis, TQP is divided into three dimensions: resource quality perception, service quality perception, image quality perception; ERB is divided into two dimensions: compliance ERB and active ERB. The case study results in the Shitangrenjia rural tourism area of China show that TQP indirectly affects ERB with satisfaction as the mediating variable; the impact of TQP on the active ERB is significantly greater than that of compliance ERB. In addition, there are significant differences among the different dimensions of TQP on ERB. This research confirms that the quality of rural tourism area has an important implication on tourists’ ERB, which could provide theoretical basis and decision support for the improvement of tourism quality and environmental protection of rural tourism areas.