The impact of behavioral reference on tourists' responsible environmental behaviors

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.133698Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We introduced behavioral reference to research responsible environmental behaviors.

  • Multi-group analysis was applied to test the regulatory role.

  • Tourists actively participated in responsible environmental behaviors.

  • Regulatory role of behavioral reference was verified.

Abstract

Human behavior is affected not only by individuals' own psychological factors but also by the surrounding environment and the behaviors of others. Existing studies on tourists' responsible environmental behaviors tend to focus only on tourists' own psychological and environmental factors while ignoring the referential role of other people's behavior. The behavioral reference of others in tourist destinations is an important situational factor that affects tourists' responsible environmental behaviors and has important research value. Based on the theory of planned behavior and taking the Zhongshan Mausoleum Scenic Area as an example, this paper explores the influence of other people's behavioral reference on tourists' responsible environmental behaviors by using the multi-group analysis method of structural equation modelling. The results show the following: (1) Tourists' attitudes toward environmental behavior and subjective norms have a significant positive impact on their responsible environmental behavioral intention, perceived behavioral control has a significant positive impact on their responsible environmental behavioral intention and their responsible environmental behaviors, and responsible environmental behavioral intention has a significant positive impact on responsible environmental behaviors. (2) Tourist destination behavioral reference plays a positive regulatory role in the relationship between tourists' responsible environmental behavioral intention and responsible environmental behaviors. Accordingly, this paper proposes relevant countermeasures and suggestions for the high-quality management and development of tourist destinations.

Introduction

The era of tourism popularization has arrived, and tourism has become a rigid demand (Bramwell, 2010). The increasing number of tourist hotels and other lodgings and tourism income not only brings huge economic benefits to the tourist area but also brings many negative effects, including increasingly prominent environmental problems, such as environmental pollution and ecological destruction (Cheng and Zhang, 2017). Tourists lack awareness of environmental protection, self-regulation and restraint, resulting in uncivilized environmental behavior such as spitting, picking flowers and plants, littering, destroying cultural relics and historic sites, and trampling on lawns, which causes ecological and environmental problems in tourist destinations, putting tremendous pressure on the protection and management of the ecological environment of the tourist destinations (Wang et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2018). Many tourist destinations either lack relevant environmental protection systems, such as surveillance, entrance fees and penalties or have systems that cannot keep up with the increase in tourism demand and the pressure on the environment. Therefore, encouraging tourists to practise responsible environmental behaviors is very important.

A tourist destination is a place where tourists' environmental behavior takes place. Environmental behavior refers to the individual behavior that can have an impact on the environment (Morren and Grinstein, 2016; Vesely and Klöckner, 2017). Combined with the specific content of this study, this paper argues that tourists' environmental behavior refers to the behavior that tourists exhibit in the tourist destination, which can have a positive or negative impact on the environment of the tourist destination. A variety of factors related to the tourist destination itself and of individual tourists constitutes the whole impact on the environment. Tourists' environmental behavior is the result of the interaction between situational factors of the tourist destination and individual tourists (Wang et al., 2018). Therefore, the situational factors of tourist destinations play an important role in tourists' environmental behavior (Wang et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2018). The practices of the Tower of London prove this point. The Historic Heritage Protection Act promulgated by the British Government in 1882 began the process of establishing the protection system of British historical and cultural heritage. The United Kingdom has enacted dozens of relevant laws and regulations, and the protection of buildings, protected areas, natural environments and human environments have also been included. Great Britain has carried out a reasonable transformation of its cultural heritage. The renovation of the tour route of the Tower of London will make the tour route more reasonable for tourists and make the protection and management of many buildings more convenient. Furthermore, The Tower of London educates and exposes tourists to the importance of the protection of cultural heritage and raises people's awareness of the protection of the Tower of London (Hinz et al., 2013).At the same time, adverse situational factors of tourist destinations provide a critical inducement for the uncivilized environmental behaviors of tourists (Wang et al., 2019). For example, in a travel destination with garbage everywhere and poor environmental quality, tourists are likely to throw garbage everywhere, which promotes a vicious cycle and will seriously affect the quality of the ecological environment and the tourists' recreational experiences.

Situational factors are related to the thing that is being perceived by people (Barr, 2002). Situational factors have increasingly attracted attention in tourism research. Research on situational tourism, situational planning, situational consumption and situational marketing has produced many results (Deacon and Harris, 2013; Sanzblas et al., 2017). However, the study of the situational factors of tourist destination is relatively weak (Imran et al., 2014). The situational factors of tourist destinations refer to all objective factors that can influence tourists' psychological activities or environmental behaviors, which are perceived by tourists in the process of tourism and have the characteristics of presence and instantaneity (Wang et al., 2018). There are generally four types of situational factors for tourist destinations, namely environmental background, environmental interpretations, behavioral reference and environmentally protective facilities (Wang et al., 2018). Most of the existing studies on tourists' responsible environmental behaviors focus on the psychological factors of tourists themselves (Han, 2015; Untaru et al., 2014; Vicente-Molina et al., 2018), concentrating on the environmental interpretations (Wang et al., 2018) and the environmental background (Wang et al., 2019) of the situational factors of tourist destinations while neglecting the influence of other people's behavioral reference on tourists' responsible environmental behaviors as a situational factor of tourist destinations.

For tourist destinations, the reference of other people's behavior may have an important impact on tourists' responsible environmental behaviors. If individuals see environmental protection workers cleaning up trash in tourist destinations, many tourists will follow suit and clean up the trash around them.

Situational factors may influence the relation between individuals' behavioral intentions and behaviors (Bagozzi, 1992). Therefore, as an important situational factor in tourist destinations, behavioral reference may affect the relation between tourists' responsible environmental behavioral intention and their responsible environmental behaviors and behavioral reference is a mediating or regulating variable between tourists' responsible environmental behavioral intention and their responsible environmental behaviors. The behavioral reference of others in tourist destinations is an objective variable, and it has no inherent correlation with tourists' responsible environmental behavioral intention and their responsible environmental behavioral intention. Therefore, behavioral reference may be a regulating variable between tourists' responsible environmental behavioral intention and their responsible environmental behaviors. Therefore, the hypothesis of this study is: behavioral reference plays a positive regulatory role in the relationship between tourists' responsible environmental behavioral intention and responsible environmental behaviors.

In this paper, the behavioral reference of others, a situational factor of any tourist destination, is introduced into the study of tourists' responsible environmental behaviors. The main objective of this paper is to test the influence of behavioral reference on tourists' responsible environmental behaviors and provide the basis for tourist destinations administrative departments to formulate effective environmental policies, implement effective environmental management of tourist destinations and promote the sustainable development of the tourism industry.

Section snippets

Attitude toward the behavior

Attitude toward the behavior refers to the degree to which an individual evaluates the advantages or disadvantages of the behavior (Ajzen, 1991) and it is influenced by behavioral beliefs. Behavioral beliefs refer to the subjective assessment of the possible outcome of the individual's implementation of an action. Attitude toward the behavior is an effective predicting variable driving behavioral intention. Relevant research has also confirmed that attitudes toward environmental behavior of

Model construction

The theory of planned behavior is a cognitive model that focuses on explaining and predicting human behavior (Miller, 2017). This theory indicates that individual behavior is explained by behavioral intention and perceived behavioral control, and that behavioral intention is influenced by attitude toward the behavior, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. The theory of planned behavior explains the general decision-making process of an individual's behavior from the perspective of

Survey of the research area

The Zhongshan Mausoleum Scenic Area is located in the Zhongshan Scenic Area, Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, China (Fig. 2). It covers an area of >80,000 square metres. The annual average number of tourists to the Zhongshan Mausoleum Scenic Area is 10 million (Sohu, 2019). In 1961, this area was in the first batch of sites protected as key cultural relics of the nation. In 1991, it was named one of the “Forty Best Tourism Resorts in China” by the National Tourism Administration. In 2009, it was

Sample descriptive statistical analysis

According to Table 2, the characteristics of the 483 Zhongshan Mausoleum Scenic Area tourists surveyed in this study are as follows: 1) there is not much difference between genders; 2) the number of tourists under the age of 14 and over the age of 65 was small—respondents were mainly young or middle-aged; 3) the level of education of the tourists was generally high—respondents were mainly college students; 4) the occupation of the tourists was dominated by company staff and students; 5) the

Implications and suggestions

In this study, the relationship between the individual factors of tourists has been verified, and these results are similar to the existing studies (Hu et al., 2018; Hu et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2018). Accordingly, the following countermeasures and suggestions are proposed to the administrative departments of tourist destinations. First, we should focus on the attitudes toward environmental behavior and strengthen the publicity for and education about responsible

Funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 41771147).

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Chang Wang, PhD, is an assistant research fellow in the Department of Land Resources and Tourism Sciences at Nanjing University, China ([email protected]). His research interests include tourism geography, tourism planning and tourists' environmental behaviors.

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    Chang Wang, PhD, is an assistant research fellow in the Department of Land Resources and Tourism Sciences at Nanjing University, China ([email protected]). His research interests include tourism geography, tourism planning and tourists' environmental behaviors.

    Jinhe Zhang (Corresponding author), PhD, is a professor and the Director of the Department of Land Resources and Tourism Sciences at Nanjing University, China ([email protected]). His research interests involve tourism geography, tourism environmental impact, and human geography.

    Jingjing Cao is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Land Resources and Tourism Sciences at Nanjing University, China ([email protected]). Her research interests include tourism geography, tourist behaviour and tourism marketing.

    Xiaofang Duan is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Land Resources and Tourism Sciences at Nanjing University, China ([email protected]). Her research focuses on telecoupling of tourism impacts on ecological environment.

    Quanxu Hu is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Land Resources and Tourism Sciences at Nanjing University, China ([email protected]). Her research interests include tourism geography, tourism planning and tourism ecological environment.

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