How Does Tourist Experience Affect Environmentally Responsible Behavior?

Di Wu, Kun Li, Jia Ma, Enxu Wang and Yang Zhu
Additional contact information
Di Wu: School of History, Culture and Tourism, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116081, China
Kun Li: School of History, Culture and Tourism, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116081, China
Jia Ma: School of History, Culture and Tourism, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116081, China
Enxu Wang: Jangho Architecture College, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110169, China
Yang Zhu: School of Business Administration, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, Dalian 116025, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 2, 1-18

Abstract: Mountain tourism is an important part of China’s tourism market. Tourist behavior is essential to environmental protection and the sustainability of destinations. This paper takes environmentally responsible behavior (ERB) as an important tourist behavior. It breaks down the dimensions of the traditional tourism experience, such as hedonism, participation, novelty; or hedonism, involvement, novelty, local culture; and analyzes the influence of entertainment, education, aesthetics, and escape on place attachment from the nature of the tourism experience. It then incorporates nature bonding into the system of place attachment and analyzes the relationship with place attachment, tourist experiences, and ERBs in Qianshan Mountain, a 5A scenic spot in China. Partial least squares structural (PLS) equation modeling is used to analyze the data of 410 valid questionnaires. The results found that tourist experiences affect ERBs through place attachment. Nature bonding is the key factor of ERBs. The results are as follows: escape and aesthetics influence ERB through nature bonding; entertainment influences general ERB through place identity and nature bonding; education has a positive impact on general ERB through place identity and place dependence. Entertainment and education experiences partially affect place attachment. Place identity and nature bonding affect general ERB, but particular ERB is related only to nature bonding. The internal psychological mechanism of ERB is identified. In addition, mountain landscapes can be designed from the perspective of entertainment experiences, landscape aesthetic, leisure atmosphere and educational functions, so that tourists can spontaneously pay attention to environmental issues and engage in the practical activities of environmental protection.

Keywords: tourist experience; place attachment; environmentally responsible behavior; Qianshan Mountain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/2/924/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/2/924/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:2:p:924-:d:724763

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().