Awe,Place Attachment And Tourists' Environmentally Responsible Behavior

The negative impact of tourism development on destination environment is more and more obvious,such as greenhouse gas emission and traffic congestion by large-scale population flow,and tourists' littering,both lead to the destruction of destination resource environment system directly or indirectly.Tourists' misconduct is the basic reason of environment problem.Compared with scenic or disciplinary measures by current scenic spot,scholars find that instead of looking for strategy to reduce tourists' misconduct,it is better to stimulate their environmentally responsible behavior to promote sustainable environment development process.Influencing factor and mechanism of tourists' environmentally responsible behavior becomes a hot topic.Existing research exploring the relationship between tourists' emotion and environmentally responsible behavior is less,but in recent years,scholars have point out the important driving function of individual emotion cannot be ignored.Literature says awe may lead to place attachment in theoretical level,and some empirical studies show the correlation of place attachment and tourists' environmentally responsible behavior.This paper takes tourists in religious mountain scenic spot in China as an example,and explores the mechanism of tourists' environmentally responsible behavior in factor level from the perspective of awe and human-place relationship.Specific,the paper constructs the model of awe,place attachment(2 dimensions including place dependence and place identity)and environmentally responsible behavior,designs formal questionnaire based on literature,interview and pretest,surveys in a period of 3 days in Mount Qian,analyzes 336 valid questionnaires using SPSS21.0 and AMOS17.0 software,tests hypothesis and gains results as follows:Tourists' awe in religious mountain scenic spot is stimulated by natural environment and religious atmosphere.The standardized path coefficient is 0.258 and 0.472 respectively,and the influence of religious atmosphere on awe is stronger than that of natural environment.The direct positive influence of awe on place dependence is significant,and awe influence place identity indirectly by place dependence.The indirect path of awe on environmentally responsible behavior includes “awe-place dependence-environmentally responsible behavior” and “awe-place dependence-place identity-environmentally responsible behavior”.The paper further verifies that place dependence is the key prepositional variable of identity.The 2 dimensions of place attachment,namely dependence and identity,both have a positive effect on tourists' environmentally responsible behavior directly.The paper first proposes and empirically examines the relationship between awe and place attachment,also awe and environmentally responsible behavior.On the whole,the awe of tourists in religious mountain scenic spot will indirectly influence their environmentally responsible behavior through place attachment.Conclusions enrich the application of related theories,and provide literature support aiming to strengthen natural environment maintenance and religious atmosphere construction to arouse tourists' awe experience,enhance place attachment and then realize the cultivation of environmentally responsible behavior.