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This study aims to examine the pro-environmental behavior of tourists in one of the northern cities of Iran, Lahijan, by applying the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT).

The sample consists of a total of 180 tourists who had traveled to Lahijan city in Guilan province. Data is analyzed using descriptive analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) technique using Smart PLS 3.0.

The results confirm the importance of PMT in explaining the pro-environmental behavior of tourists. The findings of this study show the significant relationship between vulnerability, severity, self-efficacy, response efficacy, response cost and maladaptive perception with tourist’s pro-environmental behavior. Moreover, rewards are not related to pro-environmental behavior.

This study provides a better understanding of how to motivate tourists toward pro-environmental behavior. It also contributes to reinforcing PMT by adding evidence from tourism research and delivers profiles for tourism providers.

The study contributes to the understanding of the predictors of pro-environmental behavior of tourists in Iran using a full PMT which encompasses three concepts of threats appraisal, coping appraisal and maladaptive perception.

The research analyzes the influence of three environmental triggers, i.e. awareness, concern and knowledge on environmental attachment and green motivation that affect tourists' pro-environmental behavior in the Pakistan’s tourism industry. Furthermore, this study has analyzed the moderating role of moral obligation concerning environmental attachment and green motivation on tourists' pro-environmental behavior.

Data were gathered via a structured questionnaire by 237 local (domestic) tourists of Pakistan. Furthermore, the data were examined by employing SmartPLS.

Findings demonstrate that all three environmental triggers have a positive and significant relationship with environmental attachment and green motivation. Accordingly, environmental attachment and green motivation promote tourists' pro-environmental behavior. Furthermore, the moderating role of moral obligations has also been incorporated in the study. The finding reveals a strong and positive relationship among environmental attachment and tourists' pro-environmental behaviors during high moral obligations. In contrast, moral obligations do not moderate association between green motivation and tourists' pro-environmental behavior. Therefore, competent authorities should facilitate tourists to adopt environmentally friendly practices; which will ultimately promote pro-environmental behavior.

This study provides useful insights regarding the role of tourism in fostering environmental attachment and green motivation that sequentially influence tourist pro-environmental behavior. Secondly, this research has employed moral obligations as a moderator to identify the changes in tourists’ pro-environmental behavior based on individuals' ethical considerations. Hence, the study provides an in-depth insight into tourists' behavior. Lastly, the present research offers effective strategies for the tourism sector and other competent authorities to increase green activities that can embed the importance of the environment among individuals.

The study aims to draw on the self-congruity theory to investigate the relationship among destination personality (DP), self-congruity and tourists’ pro-environmental behavioral intention (BI) among Guangzhou citizens who have experienced nature-based tourism (NBT).

The survey-based quantitative research was divided into two rounds, namely, a preliminary study exploring the dimensions of DP and the verification of whether the DP dimensions that significantly affect pro-environmental BI in step one would be selected for the main research to validate the conceptual model.

The results suggest that wholesome, one of the destination personalities, strongly predicts tourists’ pro-environmental BI, while actual self-congruity plays a mediating role between sincere, another DP, and tourists’ pro-environmental BI.

In practice, it offers multidimensional knowledge and robust evidence-based recommendations for the sustainable development and destination branding of NBT destinations in the post-epidemic era.

The study presents pioneering work that reveals previously underestimated factors influencing pro-environmental BI.

This study explores the socio-demographic and psychological factors influencing pro-environmental behavior among Generation Z individuals. Aimed at deciphering the impact of socio-demographic characteristics on psychological drivers and identifying significant psychological factors affecting pro-environmental behavior, the research utilizes an inductive approach with a sample of 225 Generation Z members from Splitsko-Dalmatia County, Croatia. Data were collected via an online questionnaire focusing on attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors related to the environment. Findings reveal that gender, education level, and residential area significantly influence psychological drivers such as guilt, moral obligations, and self-identity, with women, individuals with higher education levels, and those residing in suburban areas exhibiting higher levels of these drivers. This study contributes to the understanding of pro-environmental behavior in Generation Z by highlighting the importance of socio-demographic variables and psychological factors, thus offering insights for promoting sustainable behaviors among this demographic.

Recent studies have classified ecotourism behaviour into specific components like site-specific ecological, pro-environmental and environmental learning behaviour. However, the role of materialism in generating these types of behaviour is not clearly understood. Materialism might also affect tourists' environmental engagement. Hence, this study embarks on exploring these research gaps.

All the constructs were operationalized as first-order factors based on extant scales of measurement. After suitable pretesting, the study was able to collect 122 valid responses. The responses were analysed using partial least squares (PLS).

Results suggest that environmental engagement and environmental learning behaviour have prominent roles as enablers. Furthermore, the importance of materialism is not statistically significant and requires further investigation.

While the study showed that environmental engagement is a crucial precursor for the development of different types of ecotourism behaviour, it also has limitations. First, the study tested the validity of the proposed associations based on the perceptual responses of 122 tourists who are interested in participating in ecotourism. However, this may lack generalizability. Future research can take a common set of tourists or a specific destination and execute a longitudinal analysis to better understand the way ecotourism behaviour has evolved over time at a destination. This would in turn help the local people and tour planners to develop tourism packages and events.

As tourists are interested in environmental learning, they are eventually expected to take care of the destination environment in terms of protecting it in every form. This may include reporting of any environment damaging activity, for example, activities that can enhance environmental pollution, etc.

Materialism hinders the environmental conservation spree of tourists, when they indulge more in shopping and leisure trips. Hence, for destination planners it is very important to hold complementary events in addition to the main event to highlight the dire need of involving in ecotourism activities.

The study is of significant contribution for researchers and practitioners as it develops the antecedents and consequences of environmental learning behaviour. Furthermore, this study has implications for managers working for sustainability of tourism destinations.

This study examines the effect of sustainable development goal (SDG) concerns regarding the sustainability issues raised in the United Nations SDG agenda on pro-sustainable travel behavior (PSTB) by building on the norm activation model as well as value theory (altruism), with the latter assumed to moderate the effect of SDG concerns on PSTB.

The model was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) based on data from 200 USA respondents who have traveled internationally in the past 12 months.

The results confirmed the effect of SDG concerns on positively influencing PSTB both directly and indirectly (through the NAM variables of “responsibility” and “obligation”). Additionally, results revealed that altruism positively moderates the effect of SDG concerns on PSTB.

Results provide tourism businesses and destinations with a better understanding of which aspects of the 17 issues identified in the UN SDG agenda are more likely to influence travelers’ future PSTB and whether such behavioral changes additionally depend on people’s individual altruism levels.

Unlike previous studies focusing mainly on environmental concerns and tourists’ pro-environmental behavior, this study offers a more comprehensive understanding of PSTB in light of today’s UN SDGs.

This study aims to examine a comprehensive model for the concurrent effects of tourists’ sustainability concerns, social norms, frugality and awareness of the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) on sustainable travel behavior (STB), with sustainability in this case extending beyond the environmental to include economic and socio-cultural aspects as well.

The model is tested using a structural equation modeling technique based on data collected from 200 US respondents who traveled internationally in the past year.

Results reveal that all aforementioned variables, namely, sustainability concerns, social norms, frugality and SDG awareness, when considered together each positively influenced STB. However, SDG awareness did not accentuate tourists’ sustainability concerns associated with travel and tourism, as initially hypothesized.

Unlike previous studies that have mainly focused on the pro-environmental aspects of sustainability and failed to consider the aforementioned variables concurrently, the results from this study advance our understanding of the determinants of STB (more generally) while accounting specifically for the expected role of the UN SDG agenda.

Recent reviews of field experiments aiming to entice tourists to behave in more environmentally sustainable ways conclude that attitudes – while the primary target – do not perform as well as expected. The purpose of this study is to analyse in detail when attitudes have or have not been successful as behavioural change targets and propose a conceptual framework of possible explanations. In so doing, this study represents the first theoretical – rather than empirical – challenge to the currently dominant theoretical understanding of environmentally significant tourist behaviours and offers alternative theoretical constructs tourism researchers aiming to make tourists behave in more sustainable ways could investigate in future.

The authors investigate in detail experiments where attitude-based behavioural change approaches failed. Based on the insights from this analysis, the authors propose a conceptual framework offering five potential explanations. This study also discusses alternative theoretical constructs that could be used for behavioural change interventions.

The authors derive five potential explanations for why attitudes often fail to trigger behavioural change in the context of environmentally sustainable tourist behaviour: tourists do not notice messages attempting to change their attitudes; tourists are unwilling to cognitively process behavioural change messages; tourists develop reactance to behavioural change requests; attempts to alter attitudes do not influence habits; and attempts to alter attitudes do not reduce the effort associated with displaying the desired behaviour.

This study broadens research attention to alternative theoretical constructs that may be more effective in making tourists behave in more sustainable ways and opens opportunities for new measures tourism businesses and destinations can implement to influence tourist behaviour.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first theoretical investigation of possible reasons why attitudes have performed poorly as targets of behavioural change interventions aiming to trigger environmentally sustainable tourist behaviours.

The study aims to analyze the relationship between tourists' satisfaction and their sense of belonging in a specific cultural destination by also investigating the moderating role of their on-site involvement, both offline (on-site activities at the destination) and online (social media activities). A further objective lies in exploring the relationship between tourists' sense of belonging and their adoption of environmentally responsible behavior while at the destination. Finally, the paper attempts to determine whether said behavior can predict tourists' pro-environmental behavior and recommendation intention.

To reach these objectives, a survey and a structural equation model, based on a sample of 647 visitors of an important world Heritage site UNESCO (i.e. Urbino), have been adopted.

Findings reveal a positive influence of sense of belonging on satisfaction and environmentally responsible behavior, which, in turn, influences pro-environmental behavior and Recommendation intention, thus triggering a virtuous process in the tourists' formation as responsible and loyal travelers. Moreover, results underline how the relationship between satisfaction and sense of belonging is significantly strengthened when tourists' on-site activity involvement increases. Conversely, the moderating role of social media involvement is not supported.

The present study offers important implications for different actors in the tourism sector, such as policy makers, destination marketing organizations (DMOs) and tourism operators.

The present study explores the role of social media involvement, specifically during the tourist's holiday.

This study enriches the empirical evidence in the cultural tourism through an analysis focused on the tourists' perspective, especially by investigating the relationship between satisfaction and emotional constructs (i.e. sense of belonging) that are able to bring environmental and loyalty benefits to the destination. Moreover, although existing research has highlighted the positive influence of the tourists' involvement on their experience, there is a paucity of studies jointly analyzing the on-site and online activities in the sustainability field.

The unsustainable practices of hotels have greatly contributed to ecological imbalances, encompassing excessive energy and water consumption, improper waste disposal and inadequate resource management. Information publicity (IP) plays an effective role in influencing tourists' intentions to visit green hotels. Therefore, the current study has incorporated IP into the value-belief norm (VBN) framework to examine tourists' intentions to visit green hotels.

This study is a correlational research design, and the purposive sampling technique was employed for the data collection. The study used 355 valid data and analyzed them via partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The study results show that egoistic values have the greatest impact on pro-environmental beliefs (ENBs). In addition, the results indicate the impact of ENB and IP on personal norms (PNs), leading toward the intention to visit green hotels.

This study helps hotel managers devise and execute effective marketing strategies for green hotels. Hospitality marketers should pay more attention to values, orientations and IP, emphasizing the significance of these factors in increasing the visits of customers to green hotels.

IP, an important factor that informs tourists about hotels that are environmentally friendly, has been neglected in the tourism research. This research examines the significance of IP in developing ENBs and influencing the PN of tourists.