Research On The Mechanism Of Scenic Service Quality, Local Attachment And Responsible Environmental Behavior

Service quality is not only an important factor for scenic areas or heritage sites to gain sustainable competition against their competitors,but also plays a vital role in influencing visitors’ behavior.With the rapid development of tourism industry,on the one hand,increasing number of visitors brings considerable income for the local government,but on the other hand,it imposes negative impacts on the visited sites and causes environmental destruction of these places,which puts sustainable development of the visited sites under great pressure.Researchers in the field of tourism hold that encouraging tourists to exhibit environmentally responsible behavior(ERB)is an important approach to mitigating negative impacts on or environmental destruction of the visited sites.Tourists’ place attachment to the visited sites is regarded as a significant factor influencing their ERB.The existing empirical studies demonstrate that sustainable development of scenic areas or heritage sites may be achieved by cultivating tourists’ place attachment and encouraging them to exhibit ERB.The relationship between service quality and customers’ behaviour has been an important research topic in marketing area.Researchers from recreation and tourism circle also attach much importance to studying the relationship between service quality and visitors’ behaviour.Unfortunately,research concerning relationships among service quality,visitors’ place attachment and their ERB is extremely limited.Taking into consideration sustainable use of tourism resources as well as sustainable development of tourist attractions,the present study attempts to explore the relationships among service quality,visitors’ place attachment and their ERB in order to provide evidence for tourism management that improving service quality helps facilitate sustainable development of tourism.Based on expectation disconfirmation theory,attachment theory,theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behaviour as well as empirical studies concerning service quality,place attachment and ERB,this study created a theoretical model of service quality,place attachment and ERB to investigate the relationshipsamong the three variables.In addition,corresponding indicators for measuring the three variables were established respectively and the questionnaire for collecting data was also developed.The author of this study consulted some experts about items of the questionnaire and conducted a pretest.Based on data analysis of the pretest,the questionnaire was modified and three items were removed since they didn’t meet the criteria of the item analysis.Six 5A scenic areas and heritage sites in Shaanxi province were selected as study sites.The questionnaire survey was conducted at the above six sites and 1562 valid questionnaires were collected.Validity and reliability of the data were analyzed by using SPSS 24.0.Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the scale of each variable to assess the fit goodness of the scale.Correlation analysis and structural equation model(SEM)using AMOS 24 were adopted to test the causal relationships among service quality,place attachment and ERB in the theoretical model.The findings of the study indicate that the four proposed hypotheses are established.In other words,service quality directly and significantly affects place attachment and ERB respectively,namely,higher service quality tends to contribute to stronger place attachment and ERB intentions among tourists.The results also demonstrate that visitors’ place attachment impacts on their ERB directly and significantly,which indicates stronger place attachment elicits stronger ERB.Moreover,service quality exerts indirect influence on ERB through place attachment,indicating the mediating role of place attachment in the relationship between service quality and ERB.Furthermore,the causal relationships among dimensions of the three variables were also assessed.In the end,specific management implications about improvements in service quality,place attachment as well as ERB are provided.The theoretical and practical contributions of the present study include the following three aspects: firstly,based on exhaustive review of the existing empirical studies both at home and abroad as well as analysis of the relevant theories,this study created a theoretical model and attempted to investigate the causal relationships among service quality,place attachment and ERB by stuyding them in the same theoretical model simultaneously;secondly,a different instrument measuring fourdimensions of service quality was developed by combining the study results of both the Nordic School and American School;thirdly,the study used both nature based sites and cultural heritage sites as study sites,which expands the subjects of such studies to a certain degree and helps examine the relationships among service quality,visitors’ place attachment and their ERB more comprehensively.Providing theoretical evidence for tourism management to learn about the importance of service quality in cultivating place attachment and ERB among visitors,the present study theoretically enriches the research concerning service quality in the field of tourism.In addition,it helps tourism management to understand that improvements in service quality can elicit visitors’ ERB and contribute to sustainable use of tourism resources as well as sustainable development of local tourism.