The influence of environmental background on tourists' environmentally responsible behaviour

Abstract

Previous research on the environmentally responsible behaviour (ERB) of tourists has primarily focused on the personal psychological factors of tourists. However, the studies overlook the effect of contextual factors of a tourist site. According to the broken window theory, a disorderly, unkempt environment might lead more people to be involved in environmental destruction, which would form a vicious cycle. Therefore, it can be deduced that the environmental background (EB) of a tourist site is an important contextual factor. In this paper, the effect of the EB of a tourist site on the ERB was examined by the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) adopting structural equation model (SEM) multi-group analysis (MGA). The results show the following: first, both the attitude toward environmental behaviour (ATT) of tourists and their subjective norm (SN) have a positive impact on the environmentally responsible behavioural intention (ERBI) of tourists. In addition, perceived behavioural control (PBC) exerts a remarkable influence on the ERB of tourists and their behavioural intention. Second, the relationship between the ERBI and ERB of tourists is positively regulated by the EB of a tourist site. Additionally, this paper presents policy proposals for the environmental management of tourist sites.