Moderating and mediating roles of environmental concern and ecotourism experience for revisit intention

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to provide novel insights via a joint investigation of the mediating role of environmental concern and ecotourism experiences. It further explores environmental concern and image as moderators of the association between tourists’ ecotourism experience and revisit intention.

Design/methodology/approach

The study used a three-way framework which provided novelty ways of combined moderation-mediation tests on a sample of 474 foreign tourists.

Findings

Results show that environmental concern and ecotourism experience mediated the relationships between motivation and revisit intention. The moderating test shows that foreign tourists’ revisit intention and ecotourism experience are highest when environmental concern and image are high.

Practical implications

Results of this study suggest that it may be beneficial to relate resources of tourism’s organization to prepare for potential sustainable requirements and/or to assist tourists to develop positive pro-environment attitudes (such as inspire tourists’ sense of social responsibility to improve environmental quality), which could possibly improve the feelings about the natural environment as serving the public good and may raise concern about environmental protection reasonability for tourists.

Originality/value

This research is the first comprehensive examination of foreign tourists’ pro-environment attitudes and conducts three-way interaction between tourists’ ecotourism experience, image and environmental concern, which may provide a benchmark for future studies.

Citation

Huang, Y.-C. and Liu, C.-H.S. (2017), "Moderating and mediating roles of environmental concern and ecotourism experience for revisit intention", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 29 No. 7, pp. 1854-1872. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-12-2015-0677