From tourists' destination curiosity to tourists' pro-environmental behaviors? Adopting the construal level theory

A conceptual framework is constructed to understand the influence of destination curiosity on shaping the quality and intensity of tourists’ interpersonal interaction with other tourists, residents and tourism service providers, as well as the quality and intensity of such interactions on eliciting future tourist behaviors, which include tourists’ perceived psychological distance and the following pro-environmental behaviors. An analysis of 416 data through Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) yielded several key findings. The results were congruent with the construal level theory, close perceived psychological distance induced low-level construal level and individuals constructed the concrete mindset under that construal level. In this vein, tourists thought more about specific and concrete ways to maintain sustainable tourism instead of the abstract mindset thinking about why to maintain sustainable tourism, which eventually contributed to more actual pro-environmental behaviors.