Tangible strategies for pro-environmental behaviours through monitoring park visitors’ activities and perceived values

Place attachment and other place-related concepts are typically utilised to explain park visitors’ pro-environmental behaviours in nature-based tourism. However, these concepts mostly pertain to unobservable psychological aspects, restricting their practical application for park management. To rectify this shortcoming, our study suggests the inclusion of two antecedent factors activity participation and place value. These factors could provide more quantifiable interventions by monitoring park visitors’ activities and the values they perceive during their visits. Accordingly, we offer a unique application by incorporating these factors in existing attachment-behaviour frameworks and empirically validating this extended model in a cross-country research setting. Analyses use PLS-SEM to evaluate the model and to independently test 11 hypotheses across two data sets among domestic park visitors in natural and national parks in Italy and Vietnam. The partially successful validation of the proposed model in a multi-country setting supports its applicability in future studies. The study contributes theoretically by exploring a serial sequence, i.e. behaviour–attitude–behaviour, instead of typical singular aspects between attitude–behaviour or behaviour–attitude. Finally, it recommends tangible strategies for pro-environmental behaviours beyond place attachment, focusing on promoting participation in nature-based tourism activities and effectively communicating the place's values to park visitors.