Influencing Mechanism And Policy Simulation Of Destination Residents' Pro-environmental Behaviors:From The Resident-Destination Symbiosis Perspective

Local residents in the tourism destinations are one of the key stakeholders in tourism destinations and the main undertakers of the economic benefits brought by the tourism industry.Local residents' daily work and life activities are directly and closely related to the destination environment.The spaces of their living and production activities are influential for attracting tourists.Destination residents'participation in environmental protection is important for the sustainable development of tourism destinations.In addition,destination residents' attitudes and cognitions to the destination development and planning process indirectly affect the tourist experience as well as the protection and inheritance of the folk culture.That is,the sustainable development of tourism destinations is inseparable from the support and participation of local residents.It is worth noting that there is a resident-destination symbiosis between destination residents and the tourism destination.The"symbiotic relationships" is essentially a response to the "social relationships" of destination residents.The connections and interactions between the destination residents(interpersonal)and between the local residents and the destination environment(resident-destination)are particularly important for maintaining the "symbiotic relationships".First of all this thesis chooses status consciousness,altruistic concern,and nature connectedness to depict the interpersonal and resident-destination relationship factors and explores the impacts of these factors on local residents'pro-environmental behavioral intentions.Meanwhile,this thesis selects destination attachment,attention to social comparison information,and family pro-environmental orientation to describe the interpersonal and resident-destination interactions.The internal mechanisms and boundary conditions of the interpersonal and resident-destination relationship factors on local residents' pro-environmental behavioral intentions are further examined in this thesis.Importantly,though the behavioral intention is the most representative indicators of the behavior,there exists an intention-behavior gap.Researchers suggested that guidance policies are essential for bridging the intention-behavior gap.Therefore,managers and policy makers should formulate relevant guidance policies to encourage changes in the pro-environmental behaviors and lifestyles of local residents.To sum up,it is necessary to correctly understand the influence mechanism of local residents' pro-environmental behaviors in tourism destinations from the perspective of interpersonal and resident-destination relationships.Identifying how and when the interpersonal and resident-destination relationship factors affect the pro-environmental behavioral intentions of destination residents are critical for their participation in pro-environmental behaviors.Analyzing the effectiveness of the existing environmental policy tools on local residents' pro-environmental behaviors in long-term also are necessary prerequisites for the engagement of pro-environmental behaviors,which is of great significance for promoting the harmonious and sustainable development of tourism destinations.The main points of this thesis are listed as follows:(1)Focusing on the interpersonal and resident-destination relationship factors,a questionnaire survey was used to collected data among destination residents to explore the effects of status consciousness,altruistic concern and nature connectedness on local residents' low and high effort pro-environmental behavioral intentions.The results analyzed by the structural equation modeling(SEM)suggested that status consciousness,altruistic concern and nature connectedness have significantly positive effects on destination residents' low and high effort pro-environmental behavioral intentions.A positive spillover impact of low effort pro-environmental behavioral intentions on high effort behavioral intentions is also noted.These findings have profound significance for the sustainable development and management of destinations.(2)Based on the impacts of interpersonal and resident-destination relationship factors,this thesis further considers the influence mechanism of these factors on pro-environmental behavioral intentions of local residents.Specifically,this thesis explores the internal mechanisms and boundary conditions of how and when the interpersonal and resident-destination relationship factors influence destination residents' pro-environmental behavioral intentions.Combining the research background of this thesis,the destination dependence and destination identity,which are two dimensions of destination attachment,are introduced into the research framework as the internal mechanisms.The two social and family contextual factors;that is attention to social comparison information and family pro-environmental orientation are chose as the boundary conditions.The results suggested that status consciousness,altruistic concern and nature connectedness have direct and positive effects on destination residents' intentions to engage in pro-environmental behaviors.Besides,these effects are positively moderated by the attention to social comparison information and family pro-environmental orientation.Furthermore,status consciousness,altruistic concern and nature connectedness also indirectly affect residents'pro-environmental behavioral intentions via destination attachment variables(i.e.,destination dependence and destination identity).This thesis uncovers how and when interpersonal and resident-destination relationship factors affect local residents' intentions to adopt pro-environmental behaviors.(3)This paper explores the moderating effects of three types of guidance policies(command-and-control policies,economic incentive policies and public participation policies)on the transformation of destination residents'pro-environmental behavioral intentions to the actual pro-environmental behaviors.The results of the moderating effects postulated that the three types of guidance policies positively moderate the relationship between destination residents'pro-environmental behavioral intentions and the actual behaviors.According to the empirical results and the goals of the simulation,the simulation model for destination residents' pro-environmental behaviors is established.The simulation results showed that the mean values of destination residents' pro-environmental behavioral intentions and pro-environmental behaviors are low under the conditions of no interventions of policy tools.The three types of policy instruments with diffeerent intensities of interventions all have significant promoting effects on destination residents' pro-environmental behavioral intentions and pro-environmental behaviors.Command-and-control policies have the strongest impacts on the transformation of pro-environmental behavioral intentions into the actual behaviors,followed by economic incentive policies and public participation policies.The main contributions of this thesis are as follows:(1)Eyeing on local residents in tourism destinations,this thesis fills the gap that the existing studies focus more on tourists' pro-environmental behaviors,which expands the research on individual pro-environmental behaviors.(2)From the perspective of interpersonal and resident-destination relationships,this thesis further considers the influence mechanism of these relationship factors on the pro-environmental behavioral intentions of destination residents and explores the internal mechanisms and boundary conditions among them,which enriches the research perspective of pro-environmental behaviors.(3)Using artificial neural network and NetLogo simulation platform to simulate different types of policy tools that affect destination residents' pro-environmental behaviors,this thesis observes the long-term dynamic changes of local residents' pro-environmental behavioral intentions and pro-environmental behaviors,which makes up for the limitations of existing literatures that are limited to static testing in the field of pro-environmental behaviors.Based on the conclusions and findings,this thesis discusses several practical suggestions,which helps to promote destination residents' participation in pro-environmental behaviors and achieve the goals of environmental policies in tourism destinations.Moreover,this thesis illustrates the research limitations and proposes the directions of the future research.