Persuasion for sustainability: An elaboration likelihood perspective on visitors’ intentions for sustainable coastal cities—A case study of Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor

Coastal cities worldwide face escalating environmental pressures driven by intensive tourism activity. This highlights the need for effective communication strategies that encourage voluntary compliance with sustainability policies. This study develops a framework integrating the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and the attitude–behavior–context model to examine how message-based persuasion shapes pro-environmental attitudes and policy adherence (PA) in coastal tourism settings. Using data from domestic visitors to Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor, we employ Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling to assess sufficiency-based effects and necessary condition analysis (NCA) to identify noncompensatory constraints. Results show that peripheral-route cues, particularly emotional and aesthetic appeals, strongly predict attitudes and PA, whereas central-route cues exert no significant sufficiency effects. However, NCA reveals that central- and peripheral-route cues operate as essential conditions. The results indicate that high levels of PA cannot be achieved without minimally sufficient levels of these message features. Combined importance–performance map analysis (cIPMA) further identifies key bottlenecks constraining PA. These findings offer actionable insights for designing persuasive communication strategies targeted at domestically mobile visitors in coastal governance and sustainable tourism management.