Tourist’s Environmentally Responsible behavior with a Focus on Water-energy-food Nexus Awareness: Evidence from College Students

Abstract

Environmental issues caused by unsustainable tourism have increased fast, resulting in greater attention to tourists’ behavior contributing to ecotourism. With college students as the research object, this study explored the effects of values on tourist’s environmentally responsible behavior (TERB) by introducing the newly proposed water-energy-food nexus awareness into the Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) theory. Valid five-part questionnaires were analyzed from 799 Sichuan University students that included demographics, the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale, water-energy nexus awareness, water-food awareness and TERB. The correlation and regression analyses found that the biospheric and altruistic values orientations supported the NEP, but egoistic values did not, that water-energy nexus awareness and water-food nexus awareness were positively affected by the NEP and openness-to-change, and that openness-to-change, NEP, water-energy nexus awareness and water-food nexus awareness all had a positive effect on most TERB items except anti-waste ones. The potential role of CGBs to prevent college students from saving water, energy, and food when travelling was also highlighted. Caution should be exercised when accepting results about causality.