Climate Change Familiarity and Travel Intention: The Parallel Mediating Roles of Environmental and Social Sustainability Perceptions

This study examines whether environmental and social sustainability perceptions of a destination mediate the association between climate change familiarity and travel intention. Drawing on the knowledge–attitude–behavior approach and the theory of planned behavior, climate change familiarity was conceptualized as a second-order construct comprising media climate news, personal environmental experience, and perceived climate knowledge. Survey data from 409 residents of Mersin, Türkiye, who had previously visited Istanbul were analyzed using bootstrap-based structural equation modeling. Climate change familiarity was positively associated with both sustainability perceptions but showed no significant direct association with travel intention. Social sustainability perception was positively associated with travel intention and transmitted a positive indirect association that held across all model specifications. Environmental sustainability perception was negatively associated with travel intention only when social sustainability was controlled for; this pattern reflected statistical suppression and did not hold in a single-mediator model. The findings show that aggregated sustainability measures may mask dimension-specific mechanisms. Given the cross-sectional design, the results represent associations; for destinations facing climate-related risks, they suggest that the social dimension of sustainability deserves attention in sustainability communication.