Post-visit behavioral intentions in popular revolutionary heritage destinations: serial mediation of cultural identity and perceived environmental restorativeness with fsQCA configurational paths

Heritage tourism offers opportunities for both cultural connection and psychological restoration, yet prior research has mainly focused on cultural mechanisms and has given insufficient attention to environmental restorativeness in popular heritage destinations. Drawing on Experience Economy Theory, the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, and Attention Restoration Theory (ART), this study examines how cultural identity and perceived environmental restorativeness jointly influence post-visit behavioral intentions in popular revolutionary heritage destinations. We surveyed 972 visitors at two prominent revolutionary heritage sites in China, employing structural equation modeling, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), and importance–performance map analysis (IPMA) to uncover both linear pathways and multiple configurational routes through which experiences translate into post-visit behavioral intentions. The SEM results indicate that both cultural identity and perceived environmental restorativeness mediate the experience–intention relationship independently and sequentially, with the restorativeness pathway showing the largest relative contribution among the indirect pathways in the present model. FsQCA identified four equifinal configurational pathways to high behavioral intentions, revealing that visitors achieve high post-visit intentions through heterogeneous psychological routes rather than through any single dominant condition. IPMA further reveals that restorativeness has the highest model-based importance but comparatively lower performance among key drivers, representing a critical leverage point for sustainable destination management. These findings highlight perceived environmental restorativeness as a particularly salient pathway in revolutionary heritage destinations, while also underscoring the importance of its interaction with cultural processes. Practically, sustainable heritage tourism management in popular destinations should integrate restorative environmental design with the preservation of cultural authenticity through narrative interpretation.