The Impact of the Cognition of Landscape Experience on Tourist Environmental Conservation Behaviors

This article explores the relationship between the tourist's cognition of the landscape experience and the environmental conservation efforts at three distinct tourist sites in mountains of southwestern China. A total of 1500 on-site questionnaire surveys were distributed and 1142 valid questionnaires were used for statistical analysis. Results from multi-group path analysis showed that both cognition of the cultural landscape experience and cognition of the natural landscape experience had positive impacts on environmental conservation behaviors and behavior intentions of tourists. Results from comparative analysis among the three tourist sites indicated that cognition of the cultural landscape experience had a stronger power to predict senior environmental conservation behaviors and behavior intentions than cognition of the natural landscape experience, whereas cognition of the natural landscape experience had more power to predict general environmental conservation behaviors and behavior intentions than cognition of the cultural landscape experience. Furthermore, our findings benefit environmental management and sustainability at tourist sites.