Harnessing Environmental Triggers to Shape Sports Tourists’ Sustainable Behavior: Evidence from Gilgit-Baltistan

Wang Ying, Ahmed Bostani, Syed Hussain Murtaza and Anwar Ali ()
Additional contact information
Wang Ying: Department of Music, Hunan University of Technology, Zhuzhou 412007, China
Ahmed Bostani: SGH Warsaw School of Economics, 02-554 Warsaw, Poland
Syed Hussain Murtaza: SGH Warsaw School of Economics, 02-554 Warsaw, Poland
Anwar Ali: Institute of Human Nutrition Sciences, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, 02-787 Warsaw, Poland

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 10, 1-18

Abstract: In order to achieve environmental sustainability within the tourism industry, it is vital to understand the components that encourage sports tourists to behave in an environmentally friendly way. However, the approach by which environmental aspects affect sports tourists’ behavior is not well studied, particularly the mediating role of sports tourists’ attitudes toward sustainable practices. Employing the norm activation model (NAM), this study addressed how environmental consciousness, environmental values, and environmental knowledge influence sports tourists’ attitudes toward sustainable practices and how sports tourists’ attitudes toward sustainable practices mediate these relationships in promoting sports tourists’ environmentally sustainable behavior. The data were gathered from 302 participants utilizing purposive sampling and analyzed by employing structural equation modeling (SEM). This study’s results revealed a positive association between environmental values, environmental knowledge, and sports tourists’ attitudes toward sustainable practices. Interestingly, the relationship between environmental consciousness and sports tourists’ attitudes toward sustainable practices was found to be insignificant. In addition, the relationship between environmental consciousness, environmental values, environmental knowledge, and sports tourists’ environmentally sustainable behavior was mediated by sports tourists’ attitudes toward sustainable practices. This mediating effect underlines the role of sports tourists’ attitudes toward sustainable practices in translating environmental values and environmental knowledge into actual behavior; hence, the development of positive attitudes toward sustainability is important for encouraging eco-friendly behaviors among sports tourists. These findings provide theoretical and practical insights for tourism practitioners in formulating strategies that would encourage environmental responsibility in the sports tourism industry.

Keywords: environmental consciousness; values; knowledge; sustainable practices; sustainable behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/10/4291/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/10/4291/ (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:17:y:2025:i:10:p:4291-:d:1651958

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 ().