This study examines farmers’ intentions towards pro-environmental behavior in a famous tourist village in China called Guanshan, whose ecological environment is polluted. By adopting the empirically validated norm activation model (NAM) of Schwartz and merging it with Vroom’s expectancy theory, the current research aims to develop a refined framework for understanding the formation of and predicting changes in pro-environmental intention. Field surveys were conducted in Guanshan, which resulted in sample data consisting of 275 valid responses collected by the research team. We develop a refined model, including six latent variables and 24 observational items. The structural equation modeling results show that the final model enjoys a better predictive accuracy of pro-environmental intention than does the original NAM. The study also discovers that the motivational force of expectancy theory significantly influences pro-environmental intention, whose motivational force comes from the impact of valence and expectancy. The pro-environmental intentions of farmers are mainly affected by the environmental personal norm and by a certain degree of personal expectancy. The improvement of farmers’ pro-environmental intention needs be promoted in two approaches: the cultivation of personal environmental protection norms and the guidance of producing a desired expectation for pro-environmental intention.

Background: The study examined the villagers' intention of pro-environmental behaviour while supporting the Fallow Remediation Policy in China, research team conducted field surveys on some villagers in four famous scenic spots of Cili county where near the world natural heritage Zhangjiajie natural landscape core area, it has developed rural tourism, many local villagers rely on rural tourism to obtain livelihood income, but it is now affected by the new environmental restoration policy called Fallow Policy, some cultivated land near the tourist area needs to be repaired, which affects the tourism livelihood income of some local villagers. So the local villagers are facing the contradiction between tourism development and environmental protection; Methods: The study chose the change of local villagers' pro-environmental intention as the research content and adopted an empirically validated norm activation model (NAM) of Schwartz, then merged NAM with the Expectancy theory of Vroom. Based on 511 valid responses from the field questionnaire surveys, we aim to develop a theoretical framework for researchers to understand the influence change of villagers' pro-environmental behaviours when it comes to the sustainable development of rural tourism and tourism livelihood benefits; Results: The sample data of 511 responses including seven latent variables and 25 observational items were from villagers in the Cili county. The structural equation modeling of each index of the responses was carried out, and the findings showed that the merged model has a 76.46% better predictive accuracy of villager's pro-environmental intentions than the original NAM alone; and Conclusions: This study discovered that the motivational force of the newly discovered theory significantly influences the environmental personal norms, which comes from the joint impact of valence, instrumentality, and expectancy. It can be safely explained that villagers with a positive pro-environmental behaviour intention usually expect to have good tourism benefits and living environmental conditions under the impact of the Fallow Policy in rural tourism destination near the famous world natural heritage.