Tourists' environmentally responsible behavior: A new path of sustainable development of grassland tourism

Abstract

Deeply exploring the formation path of tourists' environmentally responsible behavior is of great significance to standardize tourists' behavior and protect the environment of grassland tourist attractions. In this paper, an integrated model that mainly discussed two parts was explored by the stimulus–organism–response (S‐O‐R) theory adopting structural equation model (SEM) and multi‐group analysis (MGA). The first part is the direct role of the service quality, subjective norms, and environmental knowledge in motivating tourists' behavioral attitude and place attachment, as well as the indirect role of those three variables in shaping environmentally responsible behavior. As the second part, the potential moderating influence of visitor gender on the model is also discussed extensively in the paper. According to a survey of grassland tourists (n = 484) from Gansu and Qinghai provinces in China, it could be found that both environmental knowledge through behavioral attitude and service quality through local attachment have indirectly influence on environmentally responsible behavior. Direct and indirect effects of subjective norms on environmentally responsible behavior exist, and the indirect effects are based on behavioral attitude and local attachments. There is a significant moderating effect of gender on the effects of environmental knowledge on behavioral attitude, service quality, and subjective norms on place attachment. Finally, the future research directions were proposed based on existing limitations.