Tourist ritual engagement and environmentally responsible behavior: the interaction of ritual type and engagement type

The ecological sustainability of tourism destinations is facing escalating threats from environmental degradation, necessitating a situational transformation that redefines the relationship between transient visitors and sensitive ecosystems. Drawing on symbolic interactionism and social identity theory, this study develops a conditional framework to examine how the congruence between structural ritual types (sacred versus secular) and tourists’ interpretive engagement modes (personal versus social-interactive) influences tourists’ environmentally responsible behavior intentions. The findings from three scenario-based experiments confirm a significant interaction effect: personal engagement in sacred rituals and social-interactive engagement in secular rituals both substantially enhance tourists’ destination identification, which subsequently promotes higher environmentally responsible behavior intention. By shifting scholarly focus from uniform ritual effects to context-dependent congruence mechanics, these findings fundamentally advance the tourism ritual literature while complementing existing sustainability approaches.