From Short-Video Sustainability Persuasion to Sustainable Tourism Intention: A Route-Sensitive ELM SOR Conceptual Framework

Despite increasing scholarly attention to short-video platforms as tourism communication tools, the mechanism through which sustainability-oriented persuasive cues shape Sustainable Tourism Intention remains insufficiently theorized. This article integrates the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and the Stimulus–Organism–Response (SOR) framework to explain how short-video persuasive cues may influence Sustainable Tourism Intention through Environmental Attitude. Methodologically, the paper adopts a theory synthesis and conceptual integration approach to connect insights from short-video persuasion, sustainability communication, environmental attitude research, and tourism intention studies. The framework treats short-video sustainability communication as a cue-dense persuasive environment, identifies key cue families, organizes selected cues according to likely central/peripheral processing tendencies, and positions Environmental Attitude as the sustainability-specific organismic evaluative state through which cue exposure translates into intention. It proposes that both central route-oriented and peripheral route-oriented cues may strengthen Environmental Attitude and may thereby shape Sustainable Tourism Intention, although they do so through different processing tendencies. The article concludes that integrating ELM and SOR provides a clearer and more bounded explanation of short-video sustainability persuasion and offers a structured basis for future empirical research.