Will concerns for ski tourism promote pro‐environmental behaviour? An implication of protection motivation theory

Abstract

AbstractEncouraging mitigation behaviour at the personal level is vital to address the issue of global climate change. However, despite numerous climate change communication campaigns, a large percentage of people still feel reluctant to engage in mitigation behaviours. In this paper, we reconsidered the gap between people's objective knowledge on climate change and their mitigation intention in tourism context. By applying protection motivation theory (PMT) and construal level theory (CLT), we accessed the mediating role of threat appraisal and coping appraisal in the context of ski tourism. The results indicate that generally, appraisal of climate change's threat on ski tourism mediates the relationship between knowledge and behavioural intention. Besides, the role of coping appraisal is also partially supported. By contextualizing this study in tourism context and also by separating generally response efficacy from that in terms of ski tourism, we verified the effect of proximising climate change on encouraging mitigation behaviour. This study contributes to existing literature by (i) empirically examining knowledge as an antecedent of PMT and also (ii) incorporating CLT to PMT in a tourism context. The findings have important implications for encouraging personal mitigation behaviours.