The Effect of Tourism Experience on Tourists’ Environmentally Responsible Behavior at Cultural Heritage Sites: The Mediating Role of Cultural Attachment

Zhenfeng Cheng,Xin Chen

doi:10.3390/su14010565

Abstract

With the rapid development of tourism and the explosive growth of tourist arrivals, the destructive effects of tourist activities on the ecological environment of tourist destinations are becoming increasingly severe, seriously restricting the sustainable development of these destinations. As one of the most important types of current tourist destinations, cultural heritage sites are in urgent need of a well-protected ecological environment. Environmental protection has already become an important task for their sustainable development. The behavior of tourists during visits, which plays a central role in tourist activities, has gradually become a key factor affecting the environment of tourist destinations. Therefore, approaches to effectively identify the mechanisms underpinning tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior have become a focus of both theoretical and practical domains. Based on a stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) theoretical framework, our study established a mediation model based on cultural attachments, and explored the mechanisms affecting how cognitive, emotional, and cultural experiences influence tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior. The experience-attachment-behavior transmission mechanism was also considered. A structural equation model was applied to empirically test the 588 pieces of data collected from tourists involved in heritage tourism. The test results show that the cognitive, emotional, and cultural experiences delivered from tourist destinations of cultural heritage, positively affected tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior. Cultural attachment plays a partially mediating role between cognitive, emotional, cultural experiences and tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior. These study results not only support theoretical research on the relationship between tourism experiences and tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior, but also indicate the effective driving pathways of tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior at the practical level. As such, this research provides both theoretical reference and practical guidance for the sustainable development of tourist destinations with diverse cultural heritages.

Highlights

Self-reported data are open to the problem of common method variance (CMV), such as social desirability and consistency motivation [82]
The results showed that the maximum covariance explained by one factor was 38.09% and less than 50%, indicating that common method variance was unlikely to invalidate our results
The conclusions are as follows: First, our study has demonstrated that the cognitive, emotional, and cultural experiences all have significant positive impacts on tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior

Summary

Introduction

With the rapid development of the tourism industry and improvement in living standards, tourism has gradually become an important part of people’s lifestyle. The destructive effects of tourist activities on the ecological environment of tourist destinations are worsening greatly with the explosive growth of tourist arrivals, severely affecting the sustainable development of these destinations [1]. The behavior of tourists, playing a central role in tourist activities, has become one of the key factors affecting the environment of tourist destinations. Improper behaviors of individual tourists may leave a direct or indirect negative environmental impact on tourist destinations [2,3].

Methods

Results

Conclusion