A signaling-attribution-trust violation perspective on tourists’ service rejection toward green tourism destinations in Vietnam

This study examines how perceived greenwashing influences tourists’ service rejection intention toward green tourism destinations in Vietnam. Using a quantitative approach, survey data collected from 444 tourists were analyzed via partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results demonstrate that perceived greenwashing initiates a sequential cognitive-affective-behavioral process, whereby perceived green risk and perceived green trust betrayal intensify negative electronic word-of-mouth, ultimately leading to service rejection intention. Among the dimensions of greenwashing, the claim-action gap (GW_KC) exerts the strongest impact on both cognitive and affective responses, underscoring the critical role of inconsistency between communicated sustainability claims and actual practices. By conceptualizing greenwashing as a destination-level credibility and trust issue, this study contributes to green tourism theory and provides managerial implications for strengthening sustainability governance and destination credibility in emerging green tourism contexts such as Vietnam.