The Effect Of Awe On Tourist Pro-Environmental Behaviors And Its Mechanism

Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up,China’s tourism industry has maintained a long period of sustained development along with the sustained and rapid growth of China’s economy.However,in the process of tourism development,people pay more attention to the pursuit of economic benefits and ignore the impact of tourism on the environment,resulting in a series of environmental problems such as the destruction of tourism resources and the deterioration of the environmental quality of tourist attractions.Tourism,a kind of human activity,will inevitably hinder the sustainable development of tourism itself,and also produce related negative benefits.Therefore,tourism environmental protection has become an important issue in the development of tourism industry.It is found that the main reason for the low level of pro-environment behavior is that people are far away from the natural environment and have low ability of natural empathy.Therefore,it is extremely urgent to explore the driving factors that promote tourists’ pro-environment behavior and weaken the influence of low natural empathy on individuals’ pro-environment behavior.More empirical studies have found that affective factors play an important role in promoting pro-environment behavior.Awe is a common complex emotional experience in the process of tourism.When people are faced with more powerful stimulus than themselves but cannot explain it through their existing cognitive schema,they will experience this kind of emotion.Existing studies have proved that awe has a prosocial behavior function,but there is still a lack of specific research on the impact of awe on tourists’ pro-environmental behavior.When individuals feel awe,they perceive that they are part of something larger,that they become small and unimportant,that they value themselves less,and that this feeling makes them pay more attention to their surroundings.Therefore,we believe that awe can stimulate tourists to carry out more pro-environment behaviors by enhancing individuals’ sense of smallness.In this study,three experiments were conducted to study the internal influence of awe on tourists’ pro-environment behavior,and to explore whether awe can promote the pro-environment behavior of individuals with low natural empathy.In the first study,the influence of awe on tourists’ pro-environment behavior in real tourism situation was investigated.The results showed that awe could positively predict tourists’ pro-environment behavior.In the second study,the participants’ feelings of awe were aroused by pictures,and the mediating effects of pro-environment behavior and self-smallness were further examined.In study 3,the video method was used to induce awe to further verify the interaction between awe and natural empathy on tourists’ pro-environment behavior.The research conclusions of this paper mainly include :(1)awe can positively promote tourists’ pro-environment behavior.Compared with neutral emotions and pleasant emotions,tourists stimulated by awe are more likely to show pro-environment behaviors.(2)Self-smallness had a complete mediating effect on the positive promotion of tourists’ pro-environment behavior by awe emotion.Awe will make individuals perceive their own smallness,reduce their attention to self-concern,and pay more attention to the external environment and the collective,thus improving their pro-environment behavior intention.(3)Awe and natural empathy have interactive effects on tourists’ pro-environment behavior.For individuals with low natural empathy,awe can significantly improve their pro-environment behavior level.Based on fear of prototype theory,this study from a fear of mood,a new viewpoint of tourists,explore the fear of mood,sense of self small relations with tourists kiss environmental behavior,constructed the "external situation-the inner self-behavior" theory model,expand the function of fear of emotional prosocial role in the field of sustainable tourism,In practice,it contributes new practical ideas to help destination managers to integrate emotional guidance into the whole process of environmental protection of tourist destinations and promote the sustainable development of tourist destinations.