GREEN TOURISM CHOICE BEHAVIOR: THE DRIVING ROLES OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION ATTITUDES AND GREEN TOURISM DEMAND IN THE MEKONG DELTA, VIETNAM

Understanding green tourism choice behavior is crucial for fostering and sustaining tourists’ participation in sustainable travel. Such insights enable destination managers to identify the determinants of tourists’ service choices, thereby facilitating the development of effective, evidence-based management strategies. Drawing upon the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991), this study aims to predict the individual green choice behaviors of tourists. A cross-sectional survey was conducted, yielding data from 403 domestic tourists visiting the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Data analyzed via Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) indicate that green tourism demand and environmental protection attitudes positively influence both the intention to participate in green tourism and actual green choice behavior. Furthermore, the findings reveal a weak effect of climate change awareness on environmental protection attitudes. This small effect size suggests that while the population is increasingly aware of climate change risks—driven by direct exposure to saltwater intrusion, droughts, and extreme weather events—this cognitive awareness is only in the preliminary stage of translating into crystallized pro-environmental attitudes. This finding aligns with the well-documented knowledge-attitude gap (Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002), indicating that awareness does not automatically overcome existing contextual barriers to shape attitudes. The paper concludes by offering policy implications for sustainable tourism management and outlining directions for future research.