Environmental values, face, and ecotourism intention in China：The mediating role of ecotourism attitude and the moderating role of emotional intelligence

Abstract

Faced with the negative impacts on the environment caused by conventional modes of tourism development, ecotourism has gradually become one of the mainstream components of China's tourism industry. Although ecotourism is gaining popularity in China, the comprehension of the factors that drive ecotourism intention remains limited. Especially the understanding of the relationships between environmental values, face, and ecotourism intention, as well as the role of emotional intelligence in individuals' ecotourism decision-making processes, is still insufficient. This study aimed to contribute to the extant literature by examining the impact of environmental values (i.e., biospheric, altruistic, and egoistic values) and face on ecotourism intention while investigating the moderating effect of emotional intelligence and the mediating effect of ecotourism attitude on these relationships. Based on the value-attitude-behavior model, this study constructed a conceptual model and analyzed the data using structural equation modeling. The original data for this study were collected through combining online and traditional paper-based questionnaire surveys from 560 Chinese tourists. The findings indicate that biospheric and altruistic values, along with face, positively affect ecotourism intention, whereas egoistic values negatively affect it. Biospheric values, altruistic values, egoistic values, and face also indirectly affect ecotourism intention through the mediating role of ecotourism attitude. Furthermore, emotional intelligence positively moderates the influence of biospheric and altruistic values on ecotourism intention. However, emotional intelligence negatively moderates the effect of egoistic values on ecotourism intention. The theoretical contribution of this study lies in its examination of the impacts of environmental values and face on ecotourism intention from a Chinese perspective. This compensates for the lack of attention paid to the impact of these factors, especially face, on ecotourism intention. This study also reveals the mechanism through which environmental values and face influence ecotourism intention by examining the mediating role of ecotourism attitude and the moderating role of emotional intelligence. Furthermore, this study innovates by introducing emotional intelligence as a moderating construct in the context of ecotourism, compensating for the deficiency in existing ecotourism behavior research that pays little attention to emotional intelligence. The findings can also inform ecotourism destination marketing and management organizations and assist ecotourism operators in formulating appropriate marketing and development strategies.