Outcome Efficacy,People-destination Affect,and Tourists' Environmentally Responsible Behavior Intention :A Revised Model Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior
Facing with the sustainability-profitability trade-off in tourism industry,tourist destinations traditionally take″regulatory approaches″to promote sustainable development .An implicit assumption underlying this paradigm is that tourists are inherent″liability″for environmental protection . Therefore,only through regulatory strategies such as control of development scale,restriction of tourist behaviors can sustainability be achieved . However,recent studies regarding″pro-environmental tourists″have raised doubts to this assumption .They argued that tourists can spontaneously behave environmental-friendly,and thus can be regarded as″asset″rather than″liability″in sustainable development .Although there have been some studies investigating drivers of individuals' intention to perform environmentally responsible behaviors (ERB),few of them focused on the tourism context,or took tourism-specific factors into consideration .To address this lack in the extant literature,a theoretical model that integrates outcome efficacy and place attachment into the TPB model was proposed in this study to better understand tourists' ERB intentions .It is argued that these two constructs are of high relevance to actor's intention to perform ERB in the tourism context .A sample of visitors (N= 251) to Xixi National Wetland Park was then used to examine the proposed model and hypotheses . The empirical results and implications of the study are as follows .(1) In consistence with previous studies,behavioral attitude is confirmed as a most robust predictor of behavioral intention (β1 = 0 .47,p < 0 .001),which suggests that tourists' attitude toward environmental behaviors can greatly influence their intention to perform ERB in a specific tourist destination . (2) Subjective norm is verified to be positively related to both tourist' attitude toward ERB and their ERB intention (β2 = 0 .19,β3 = 0 .31,p < 0 .05),which indicates that perceived social pressure from the public opinions,and more importantly,significant others,have positive influence upon tourists'attitude toward ERB and their ERB intention .(3) Tourists' ERB intention is not only influenced by their rational evaluation of the benefits and costs with regard to conducting ERB,but also influenced by irrational factors such as perceived outcome efficacy of the behaviors and tourist's emotional bond with the destination .In particular,place attachment which is derived from tourists' emotional tie and psychological identification with specific destination can significantly predict their attitudes toward ERB,as well as their ERB intention (β6 = 0 .29,β7 = 0.28,p< 0 .001) . Based on these findings,tourism practitioners are suggested to go beyond the traditional ″regulatory approaches″which were criticized by some researchers for their defects in long-term efficiency .An alternative paradigm that inspires tourists' ERB through managerial strategies like on-site education,emotional investment,efficacy-building,and norm-shaping are thus recommended .These innovative approaches are argued to be a good complement to conventional regulatory approaches in addressing environmental dilemmas faced by tourist destinations .