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Residents’ environmental conservation behaviour in the mountain tourism destinations in China: Case studies of Jiuzhaigou and Mount Qingcheng

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Abstract

This study aimed at gaining an understanding of the formation of residents’ Environmental Conservation Behaviour (ECB) to promote sustainable tourism development in Chinese mountain areas. In particular, a theoretical framework was constructed by merging residents’ mountain attachment and their environmental values, and awareness of environmental consequences based on the Cognition Behaviour Theory. This research sampled 642 residents with convenience sampling method in Jiuzhaigou and Mount Qingcheng, and structural equation modelling analysis was conducted to identify the relationships among the above variables. Results verified that mountain attachment affected people’s awareness of environmental consequences, which then affected their ECB. Environmental values and mountain attachment directly and positively influenced ECB. Moreover, awareness of environmental consequences played the most prominent role in predicting ECB among all the predictors in this study. In all, this study derived several significant implications which can not only contribute to environmental management policies in tourism field but also help to improve the levels of the antecedents of residents’ ECB and promote sustainable tourism development in Chinese mountain areas.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41501147, 41661034, 41671130), The Scientific Platform and Innovation Capability Construction Program of GDAS (Grant No. 2016GDASPT-0210), GDAS' Special Project of Science and Technology Development under Grant (Grant No. 2017GDAsCX-080), and the Guangdong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 2017A030310475).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangzhou, 510070, China

    Yu-ling Zhang, Hong-ou Zhang & Yang Wang

  2. Guangdong open laboratory of geospatial information technology and application, Guangzhou, 510070, China

    Yu-ling Zhang & Yang Wang

  3. School of Geographic and Oceanographic Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210046, China

    Jie Zhang

  4. Shenzhen Tourism College, Jinan University, Shenzhen, 518053, China

    Ruo-yang Zhang

  5. School of History Culture and Tourism, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, 221116, China

    Yong-rui Guo

  6. School of Architecture, State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Building Science, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510641, China

    Zong-cai Wei

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  1. Yu-ling Zhang
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  2. Jie Zhang
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  3. Hong-ou Zhang
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  4. Ruo-yang Zhang
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Correspondence to Ruo-yang Zhang or Zong-cai Wei.

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Zhang, Yl., Zhang, J., Zhang, Ho. et al. Residents’ environmental conservation behaviour in the mountain tourism destinations in China: Case studies of Jiuzhaigou and Mount Qingcheng. J. Mt. Sci. 14, 2555–2567 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-016-4183-0

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