Sustainable Destination Marketing in Saudi Arabia: Effects of Sustainability Storytelling and Smart Tourism Interactivity on Responsible Visit Intention via Destination Trust

This study investigates the impact of sustainable destination marketing on enhancing tourists’ intention for responsible visitation in Saudi Arabia by fostering destination trust through two manageable digital levers: the quality of sustainability storytelling and the interactivity of smart tourism. Based on a trust-based S-O-R framework and supplemented by signaling and uncertainty reduction theories, the research posits that high-quality, credible sustainability narratives and responsive, two-way smart touchpoints serve as trust indicators that lead to enhanced responsibility-oriented intentions. An online survey of digitally engaged tourists and potential tourists (N = 420) was used to gather the data. We used SmartPLS, version 4.1.1.7 (SmartPLS GmbH, Monheim am Rhein, Germany), with bootstrapping (5000 resamples) to assess the measurement and structural models. The findings demonstrate that the quality of sustainability storytelling significantly predicts destination trust (β = 0.418, p < 0.001), as does smart tourism interactivity (β = 0.347, p < 0.001). Destination trust positively affects responsible visit intention (β = 0.318, p < 0.001) and partially mediates the impacts of storytelling quality (β = 0.133, p < 0.001) and interactivity (β = 0.110, p < 0.001) on responsible visit intention. The model elucidates 40.9% of the variance in destination trust and 40.6% in responsible visit intention, underscoring trust as a pivotal mechanism by which credible sustainability storytelling and efficient smart interactivity can promote more responsible visitation.