From Ritual to Responsibility: How Immersive Ritual Interactions in Ethnic Tourism Inspire Tourists’ Pro- environmental Behaviors

Rituals, rooted in religion and central to social life, help sustain order and foster cohesion. Building on the tourism ritual interaction framework, this study examines how tourists’ perceived ritual interaction in ethnic tourism shapes their pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs). Integrating cognitive appraisal theory and social identity theory, we propose a dual-mediation framework in which awe and cultural identity serve as mediators, with prior knowledge as a moderator. Three studies were conducted: a pre-study to confirm scale items, a survey of 516 tourists analyzed using structural equation modeling, and a scenario-based experiment with 388 valid responses, in which ritual interaction was manipulated via video stimuli and prior knowledge was measured as a moderator. Results show that ritual interactions significantly enhance both high- and low-effort PEBs. Awe partially mediates the link between ritual interaction and low-effort PEBs, with the effect strengthened by higher prior knowledge. Cultural identity mediates the effect of ritual interaction on both PEB types, regardless of prior knowledge. The study highlights dual emotional and identity-based pathways through which ritual interactions foster PEBs and offers practical guidance for designing cultural-environmental rituals to support sustainable tourism development.