ABSTRACT Under accelerating climate change, climate‐vulnerable island destinations face increasing challenges in achieving sustainable tourism development. Although previous studies have identified tourism experiences and environmental cognition as important antecedents of pro‐environmental behavior, their relative roles in shaping pro‐environmental tourism preferences remain insufficiently understood. This study develops a parallel‐pathway framework to examine experience‐driven and value‐cognitive influences on pro‐environmental tourism preferences in Indonesian island destinations. Survey data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS‐SEM). The results show that destination attributes significantly enhance tourists' cognitive, cultural, and health experiences. However, only health experience has a significant positive effect on pro‐environmental tourism preferences, whereas cognitive and cultural experiences show no significant effects. Environmental awareness and climate change perception both exert significant positive direct effects on pro‐environmental tourism preferences. In contrast, environmental awareness does not significantly moderate the effects of experiential dimensions, while climate change perception negatively moderates the relationship between cognitive experience and pro‐environmental tourism preferences. These findings suggest that experiential and value‐cognitive influences operate as parallel mechanisms in shaping pro‐environmental tourism preferences. The study contributes to tourism behavior research by revealing the differentiated roles of multidimensional tourism experiences and environmental cognition in climate‐sensitive island contexts. In particular, it highlights the importance of health‐related restorative experiences and identifies climate change perception as a boundary condition of experiential influence. The findings also provide practical implications for sustainable destination management by emphasizing the need to simultaneously enhance experiential quality and strengthen environmental value internalization.
Chen et al. (Sun,) studied this question.