Antecedents of tourists environmentally responsible behavior in managing sustainable coastal tourism

Coastal destinations must balance tourism-led economic gains against environmental pressures such as plastic leakage, habitat disturbance, and resource stress, making tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior (TERB) a priority for destination management. Drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework, this study examines how two forms of social-media user-generated content (SMUGC), cognitive and affective triggers, relate to tourists’ environmental concern and environmental attitude, and how these states, together with place attachment and cultural attachment, are associated with TERB. Cross-sectional survey data from 417 social-media-using tourists across nine beaches on the Karnataka coast of India were analyzed using PLS-SEM. Cognitive triggers were more strongly associated with environmental concern, whereas affective triggers were more strongly associated with environmental attitude. Concern, attitude, place attachment, and cultural attachment each predicted TERB, and the model explained 57.7% of the variance. Extending prior work that already distinguishes cognitive from affective content, the findings indicate that cognitve and affective triggers relate to TERB through largely separate appraisal pathways, and that cultural attachment constitutes a stewardship route empirically distinct from place-based attachment in a Global South coastal-cultural setting. For destination managers, the results support integrated strategies combining credible environmental information, emotionally resonant digital storytelling, and culturally embedded on-site nudges.