Work

Research on the Impact of Climate Change Perceptions on the Carbon Offset Behavior of Visitors to Wuyi Mountain Forestry Heritage Site

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Forestry heritage tourism can spread the ecological concept of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, and it is a nature-based solution to climate change. However, how tourists are guided to form an emotional identity and how their attention to climate change issues can be stimulated continuously remain unclear. Therefore, in this study, we selected the Wuyi Mountain Forestry Heritage Site as our study site and employed PLS-SEM to analyze the responses of 384 tourists, thereby examining the underlying mechanism linking their perceptions of climate change to carbon offset behaviors within forestry heritage sites. The results showed the following: Perceptions of climate change had a positive and significant impact on carbon offset behavior (β = 0.310, p < 0.001), ecological identity had a positive and significant impact on carbon offset behavior (β = 0.375, p < 0.001), and the sense of environmental responsibility had a positive and significant impact on carbon offset behavior (β = 0.226, p < 0.01). At the same time, ecological identity and environmental responsibility play an intermediary role, and the impact of climate change perception on the carbon offset behavior of tourists at forestry heritage sites is moderated by tourists’ health attitudes. In addition, gender, age, and educational background have an impact on the process of carbon-offsetting behavior development at forestry heritage sites. This research further clarifies the internal logic of tourists’ carbon offset behavior in the context of heritage tourism, helps to enrich the theoretical system of Nbs and heritage tourism research, and provides a feasible reference for the realization of the SDGs.

Source: Forests

DOI: 10.3390/f16040693

Authors: Sunbowen Zhang, Cuifei Liu, Youcheng Chen, Jingxuan Liang, Yongqiang Ma

Institutions: Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Quanzhou Normal University, Nanjing Agricultural University

Language: English

Topic: Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Climate action, Life on land

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $3,137