Understanding Summer Forest Sojourning Behavior: A Grounded Theory Exploration of Tourist Motivations, Restorative Mechanisms, and Perceived Value

Amid global warming, mountain forests increasingly serve as summer climate shelters, yet the behavioral logic of forest sojourning extends beyond mere heat avoidance. This study employs a grounded theory approach, based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 30 summer forest sojourners in Lingchuan County, China, to construct a theoretical model of the “dual-pathway driving mechanism for psychophysical state transition.” The findings reveal three interconnected dimensions. First, forest sojourning is associated with two intertwined motivational pathways—heat avoidance (damage aversion) and wellness pursuit (benefit seeking)—forming a nested structure where heat avoidance is the surface layer and wellness pursuit the underlying driver, with participants retrospectively describing a perceived shift in motivational salience as their sojourn deepened. Second, psychophysical restoration is perceived by participants as emerging from a synergy of environmental perception, activity experience, and companionship interaction, as a conceptual heuristic formula formally expressed as Restorative Effect ≈ Environmental Perception × Activity Experience × Companionship Interaction. Third, the core value of forest sojourning lies in enabling a fundamental existential state transition from “fast-paced survival” to “slow-living being,” which becomes internalized as value identification with pristine ecology and opposition to over-commercialization, crystallizing into normative expectations for destination development. This model extends push-pull theory in wellness tourism, advances restorative mechanisms research within Attention Restoration Theory, and redirects tourism value inquiry from experience evaluation toward existential states, providing theoretical foundations for the sustainable planning of forest wellness destinations.