Tourist destination image, place attachment and tourists' environmentally responsible behavior: a case of Zhejiang tourist resorts.

Since more than 20 years ago,sustainable tourism has been the philosophy and action which is strongly supported and advocated by international organizations and governments,and the hotspots that attract the attention of the tourism research community.With the rapid development of tourism in China,tourism industry has been playing an important role in the local economic development.Meanwhile,tourist activities spontaneously have exerted negative effects on tourist destination environment.Tourists,as the behavioral agent of tourist destination environment,need to implement environmentally responsible behavior which helps to promote the sustainable development of tourism.Therefore,how to cultivate tourists' environmentally responsible behavior has become one of the most engaging topics in the field of sustainable tourism with regard to the building of a beautiful China.Although the importance of environmentally responsible behavior as a tool to enhance the sustainability of tourism is generally acknowledged,prior research on the effects of it is not systematic and in-depth.Results from a large body of literature confirm that place attachment is especially important in explaining environmentally responsible behavior.However,scholars debate that there is a lack of discussion on this important topic of investigation,making it difficult to draw specific conclusions about why,how and in what contexts place attachment contributes to environmentally responsible behavior.Accordingly,based on the theory of tourist destination image,place attachment and environmentally responsible behavior,this paper divides tourist destination image into five aspects:landscape image,facility image,service image,security image and affective image; divides place attachment into two aspects:place dependence and place identity; and builds a model that depicts the relationship among tourist destination image,place attachment and tourists ' environmentally responsible behavior.This paper assumes that tourist destination image is the antecedent variable of place attachment and tourists' environmentally responsible behavior.This paper also holds the view that place attachment plays a mediating role between tourist destination image and tourists' environmentally responsible behavior.In order to test the model,the data for this paper were collected using a questionnaire survey.The questionnaires were collected in Zhejiang tourist resorts.Six hundred questionnaires were distributed and 529 valid questionnaires were obtained with a useable response rate of 88.2%.The data were analyzed using SPSS Amos software.This paper empirically tests concept reliability,validity and hypothesis.The results from confirmatory factor analysis indicated that there is sufficient reliability and validity of each concept in this model.When using the structural model to test the research hypotheses,the empirical results showed that:1) Landscape image,facility image,service image and security image significantly,directly and respectively affect affective image.Facility image and service image are antecedents of place dependence while partially mediating the effect of affective image.Security image and landscape image have an indirect effect on place dependence.Security image,service image and landscape image significantly and directly affect place identity while partially mediating the effect of place dependence.Facility image has an indirect effect on place identity.Service image is an antecedent of tourists ' environmentally responsible behavior while partially mediating the effect of place attachment.Landscape image,facility image and security image have an indirect effect on tourists' environmentally responsible behavior.2) Affective image has a direct effect on place dependence while it has an indirect effect on place identity and tourists environmentally responsible behavior.3) Place dependence has a direct effect on place identity and it is an antecedent of tourists' environmentally responsible behavior while partially mediating the effect of place identity.The theoretical and practical implications of this model are also broadly discussed.