Place-Related Concepts and Pro-Environmental Behavior in Tourism Research: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

The negative impacts of tourism development are increasing environmental problems related to the destruction of the global environment, calling on scholars and practitioners to look more at the relationship between people and place. In this concern, place attachment has attracted wide interest, especially from environmental psychologists, to investigate this relationship. This paper presents different approaches to analyze place attachment and related concepts to determine pro-environmental behavior in tourism consumption. It identifies critical gaps in the literature and extends existing theoretical frameworks by considering additional factors, and the entire process from input (participation), through mediations (attachment, meanings, satisfaction) to output (behavior). It reviews the definition of place attachment and essential place-related concepts and outlines why the suggested framework is necessary to extend the current body of research in people–place relationships. It also broadly evaluates current scales and measurement models of constructs included and the structural model of this framework, thereby making recommendations relevant for subsequent empirical research. Finally, contributions to theory, limitations, and suggestions are discussed.