Employing a value-belief-norm framework to gauge Carthage residents’ intentions to support sustainable cultural heritage tourism

Abstract

In light of the recent conflicts in Carthage over land use, cultural heritage preservation, and sustainable tourism, this works utilized a value-belief-norm (VBN) theoretical framework to consider psychological antecedents of residents' behavioral intentions to support cultural heritage tourism. As such, personal values, cultural worldview, awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, and subjective norms were considered antecedents of intentions to support cultural heritage tourism. Data were collected from 475 Carthage residents in nine neighborhoods adjacent to UNESCO World Heritage Sites using an on-site self-administered questionnaire. The proposed model was assessed through confirmatory factor analysis (to demonstrate sound psychometric properties across all 11 factors within the model), followed by structural equation modelling. Overall, 15 of the 19 proposed hypotheses were supported, ultimately contributing to 28% of the variance explained in residents' behavioral intentions to support cultural heritage tourism. Implications for theory and practice along with limitations and future research opportunities are discussed at the close of the paper.

Consumer behavior and environmental sustainability in tourism and hospitality: a review of theories, concepts, and latest research

“…theory of reasoned action, theory of planned behavior, model of goal-directed behavior, norm activation theory, and value-belief-norm theory). These are well-established theories in environmental sustainability, which have been successfully applied and extensively used in explaining pro-environmental behaviors among consumers (Han, 2020;Manosuthi et al, 2020;Megeirhi et al, 2020;Onwezen et al, 2013). The theories view environmentally-sustainable consumer behaviors as being stimulated by pro-social motives or self-interest motives (Ajzen & Kruglanski, 2019;Han, 2015;Meng et al, 2020).…”

“…Value-belief-norm theory Schwartz's (1977) norm activation model is developed to explicate general pro-social/altruistic behavior whereas Stern et al's (1999) value-belief-norm theory is specifically designed to explain one's pro-environmental behavior. The value-belief-norm theory is an extended version of the norm activation model (Choi et al, 2015;Han, 2015;Megeirhi et al, 2020;Young et al, 2020).…”

Perceived social impacts of tourism and quality-of-life: a new conceptual model

“…How residents' desires are being met and their voices being heard may determine their receptiveness and support for tourism and tourists (domestic and international). This may also help reduce social conflicts (Qiu et al, 2020;Ma et al, 2020) promoting support for tourism (Megeirhi et al, 2020). Policy makers and practitioners need to adopt/reinforce the stakeholder engagement approach and develop tourism destinations that are socially sustainable.…”

“…It is yet evident that an understanding of residents' behaviour both in the tourism literature and across other fields rely on overly simplistic models. Researchers continue to address growing concerns on detrimental impacts of tourism (Scott et al, 2016) with a plethora of studies on sustainable tourist behaviour (Landon et al, 2018, Le on & Araña, 2020 and residents' support for sustainable tourism development Megeirhi et al, 2020).…”

Visitor flows to World Heritage Sites in the era of Instagram

“…This in combination with signs of strong growth in cities as well as in other areas with World Heritage Sites raises the discussion of over-visitation (Du Cros, 2008;Du Cros & Kong, 2020;Job et al, 2017;Larson & Poudyal, 2012;Milano et al, 2019;Orsi et al, 2020;Yang et al, 2019). Subsequently, there are suggestions that the social and environmental caring capacity of WHSs should be carefully defined, including an emphasis on information on visitor density (Kaltenborn et al, 2013;Megeirhi et al, 2020;Shelby, Vaske and Heberlein;1989).…”