Does religious ambience encourage tourists’ civilised behaviour in religious cultural heritage sites?

Tourists’ civilised behaviour is considered to make critical contributions to resources, environmental and cultural protection of tourism destinations, tourists’ experience and mood, and the competitiveness and image creation of tourism organisations, nations, and regions. However, relatively little attention has been paid in the literature to the factors that encourage tourists to actively implement civilised behaviour, and in particular the contextual factors underlying civilised behaviour. Focusing on a religious cultural heritage context in Nanyue (south-central China), this study explains what underlies the impact of a specific contextual factor (religious ambience) on civilised behaviour by quantitatively analyzing questionnaire responses collected from 474 tourists. Our study generates two meaningful findings: (1) As a significant contextual factor of the destination, religious ambience directly and indirectly (via authenticity and tourist self-responsibility awareness) influences tourists’ civilised behaviour; (2) Despite the contagion effect of deviant behaviour in tourism settings, the more seriously tourists perceive deviant other-tourist behaviour, the stronger the impact of their responsibility awareness on civilised behaviour. With these findings, this study contributes to the quantitative literature on tourists’ civilised behaviour and offers valuable practical insights for the management of religious heritage sites.