IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i9p5542-d808799.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tourists’ Intention of Undertaking Environmentally Responsible Behavior in National Forest Trails: A Comparative Study

Author

Listed:
  • Qing Zhang

    (College of Tourism, Wuyi University, Nanping 354300, China
    Educational Faculty, Mahasarakham University, Mahasarakham 44150, Thailand)

  • Arporn Popa

    (Educational Faculty, Mahasarakham University, Mahasarakham 44150, Thailand)

  • Huazhen Sun

    (College of Tourism, Wuyi University, Nanping 354300, China
    Graduate School of Business, SEGi University, Kuala Lumpur 47810, Malaysia)

  • Weifeng Guo

    (College of Tourism, Wuyi University, Nanping 354300, China)

  • Fang Meng

    (School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management, College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA)

Abstract

The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the Norm Activation Model (NAM) are often employed to examine behavioral intention, but the perspective and attribute differences of these two models have been largely neglected. This study applies TPB and NAM to analyze and compare the intention of trail tourists to undertake environmentally responsible behavior (ERB), which may directly affect the sustainability of the trail system and the surrounding areas. A survey research approach was employed, and 452 responses were collected from tourists in three national forest trails in China. Beginners and experienced trail tourists were also categorized in the study for comparison purposes. Structural equation modeling was utilized in data analysis. The results demonstrate that the TPB model and the NAM model, which represent rationality and morality perspective respectively, are both suitable in explaining the intention of trail tourists to undertake ERB. Comparatively, the TPB model’s rationality perspective shows applicability in explaining both beginner and experienced trail tourists’ intention of undertaking ERB, whereas the NAM morality model only applies to experienced trail tourists. The study provides insights into better understanding and promotion recommendations of ERB in national forest trails.

Suggested Citation

  • Qing Zhang & Arporn Popa & Huazhen Sun & Weifeng Guo & Fang Meng, 2022. "Tourists’ Intention of Undertaking Environmentally Responsible Behavior in National Forest Trails: A Comparative Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-16, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:9:p:5542-:d:808799
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/9/5542/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/9/5542/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ajzen, Icek, 1991. "The theory of planned behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 179-211, December.
    2. Noga Collins-Kreiner & Nurit Kliot, 2017. "Why Do People Hike? Hiking the Israel National Trail," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 108(5), pages 669-687, October.
    3. Zhang, Yixiang & Wang, Zhaohua & Zhou, Guanghui, 2013. "Antecedents of employee electricity saving behavior in organizations: An empirical study based on norm activation model," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1120-1127.
    4. Jason Oliver & Stefanie Benjamin & Hillary Leonard, 2019. "Recycling on vacation: Does pro-environmental behavior change when consumers travel?," Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 266-280, April.
    5. Onwezen, Marleen C. & Antonides, Gerrit & Bartels, Jos, 2013. "The Norm Activation Model: An exploration of the functions of anticipated pride and guilt in pro-environmental behaviour," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 141-153.
    6. Yan Gao & Lilin Zou & Alastair M. Morrison & Fanglin Wu, 2021. "Do Situations Influence the Environmentally Responsible Behaviors of National Park Visitors? Survey from Shennongjia National Park, Hubei Province, China," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-15, August.
    7. Yuling Zhang & Jie Zhang & Yuyao Ye & Qitao Wu & Lixia Jin & Hongou Zhang, 2016. "Residents’ Environmental Conservation Behaviors at Tourist Sites: Broadening the Norm Activation Framework by Adopting Environment Attachment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(6), pages 1-16, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yunhao Yao & Ruoquan Zheng & Merle Parmak, 2022. "Factors Influencing the Willingness to Pay in Yachting Tourism in the Context of COVID-19 Regular Prevention and Control: The Case of Dalian, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(20), pages 1-17, October.
    2. Ziyi Li & Liang Mao, 2022. "Construction of a National Trail Research Framework under a Natural Protected Area System," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-19, September.
    3. Xingping Cao & Junlin Qiu & Leyu Wang & Gefen Zhou, 2022. "An Integrative Model of Tourists’ Pro-Environmental Behavior Based on the Dual Path of Rational Planning and Embodied Emotion," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(13), pages 1-19, June.
    4. Qi Wang & Yue’e Liao & Jun Gao, 2022. "Rural Residents’ Intention to Participate in Pro-Poor Tourism in Southern Xinjiang: A Theory of Planned Behavior Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-17, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Han, Heesup & Hyun, Sunghyup Sean, 2018. "What influences water conservation and towel reuse practices of hotel guests?," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 87-97.
    2. Jingjing Wang & Mingyue Li & Sinan Li & Kai Chen, 2022. "Understanding Consumers’ Food Waste Reduction Behavior—A Study Based on Extended Norm Activation Theory," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(7), pages 1-15, April.
    3. Yanqing Song & Han Bao & Shan Shen, 2022. "Understanding the Influence of Initial Values of College Students in Shaping Pro-Environmental Behavioral Intention," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(15), pages 1-14, August.
    4. Peidong Sang & Haona Yao & Lin Zhang & Sen Wang & Yanjie Wang & Jinjian Liu, 2020. "Influencing factors of consumers’ willingness to purchase green housing: a survey from Shandong Province, China," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(5), pages 4267-4287, June.
    5. Sunmi Yun & Taeuk Kim, 2019. "What Do Coffee Shop Entrepreneurs Need to Do to Raise Pro-Environmental Customer Behavioral Intentions?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-19, May.
    6. Wang, Yacan & Yang, Ying & Wang, Jiaping & Douglas, Matthew & Su, Duan, 2021. "Examining the influence of social norms on orderly parking behavior of dockless bike-sharing users," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 284-296.
    7. Olawole Fawehinmi & M. Y. Yusliza & Wan Zulkifli Wan Kasim & Zaleha Mohamad & Muhammad Abi Sofian Abdul Halim, 2020. "Exploring the Interplay of Green Human Resource Management, Employee Green Behavior, and Personal Moral Norms," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, December.
    8. Felix Ostertag, 2023. "Integrating OCBE Literature and Norm Activation Theory: A Moderated Mediation on Proenvironmental Behavior of Employees," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-27, May.
    9. Mekhala Kaluarachchi & Anuradha Waidyasekara & Raufdeen Rameezdeen & Nicholas Chileshe, 2021. "Mitigating Dust Pollution from Construction Activities: A Behavioural Control Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-19, August.
    10. Hamid Rastegari Kopaei & Mehdi Nooripoor & Ayatollah Karami & Ruxandra Malina Petrescu-Mag & Dacinia Crina Petrescu, 2021. "Drivers of Residents’ Home Composting Intention: Integrating the Theory of Planned Behavior, the Norm Activation Model, and the Moderating Role of Composting Knowledge," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-21, June.
    11. Jinhua Xie & Gangqiao Yang & Zhaoxia Guo & Ge Wang, 2021. "Exploring the Influence Mechanism of Farmers’ Organic Fertilizer Application Behaviors Based on the Normative Activation Theory," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-18, October.
    12. Su-Lan Pan & Ju Chou & Alastair M. Morrison & Wen-Shiung Huang & Meng-Chen Lin, 2018. "Will the Future Be Greener? The Environmental Behavioral Intentions of University Tourism Students," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-17, February.
    13. Han, Heesup, 2015. "Travelers' pro-environmental behavior in a green lodging context: Converging value-belief-norm theory and the theory of planned behavior," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 164-177.
    14. Heesup Han & Bee‐Lia Chua & Antonio Ariza‐Montes & Elena‐Nicoleta Untaru, 2020. "Effect of environmental corporate social responsibility on green attitude and norm activation process for sustainable consumption: Airline versus restaurant," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(4), pages 1851-1864, July.
    15. Verma, Vivek Kumar & Chandra, Bibhas & Kumar, Sumit, 2019. "Values and ascribed responsibility to predict consumers' attitude and concern towards green hotel visit intention," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 206-216.
    16. Wang, Bo & Wang, Xiaomeng & Guo, Dongxue & Zhang, Bin & Wang, Zhaohua, 2018. "Analysis of factors influencing residents’ habitual energy-saving behaviour based on NAM and TPB models: Egoism or altruism?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 68-77.
    17. Heesup Han & Hossein G.T. Olya & Jinkyung (Jenny) Kim & Wansoo Kim, 2018. "Model of sustainable behavior: Assessing cognitive, emotional and normative influence in the cruise context," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(7), pages 789-800, November.
    18. Nketiah, Emmanuel & Song, Huaming & Cai, Xiang & Adjei, Mavis & Adu-Gyamfi, Gibbson & Obuobi, Bright, 2022. "Citizens’ intention to invest in municipal solid waste to energy projects in Ghana: The impact of direct and indirect effects," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 254(PC).
    19. Chun-Hsi Vivian Chen & Yu-Cheng Chen, 2021. "Assessment of Enhancing Employee Engagement in Energy-Saving Behavior at Workplace: An Empirical Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-18, February.
    20. Heesup Han & Myong Jae Lee & Wansoo Kim, 2018. "Antecedents of Green Loyalty in the Cruise Industry: Sustainable Development and Environmental Management," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 323-335, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:9:p:5542-:d:808799. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.