Against the backdrop of rapidly expanding cultural heritage tourism and mounting pressures on heritage conservation, a central challenge for World Heritage Sites is how to effectively foster visitors’ responsible environmental behavior in high frequency visitation contexts. Focusing on the Dazu Baodingshan Rock Carvings in Chongqing, this study develops a comprehensive theoretical model. This model is grounded in the Value Belief Norm theory, tourism experience theory, place attachment theory, and the effect cognition behavior framework. The model incorporates multiple antecedent variables. These are service quality, place attachment, environmental awareness, cognitive evaluation, and community participation. It positions visitor satisfaction as a mediating construct and identifies responsible environmental behavior as the outcome variable. A total of 480 valid responses were collected through on-site surveys. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling to assess the measurement and structural models, the findings indicate that the five antecedent variables exert relatively weak direct effects on responsible environmental behavior. However, each significantly enhances visitor satisfaction. Satisfaction, in turn, shows the strongest and most significant influence on responsible environmental behavior. This forms the most powerful explanatory pathway within the model. Bootstrap analysis further confirms visitor satisfaction as a mediator between all antecedent variables and responsible environmental behavior. This reveals a characteristic strong mediation structure. This suggests that responsible actions in cultural heritage settings depend more on visitors’ holistic evaluations of their overall experience than on any isolated cognitive or affective factor. The study advances theoretical understanding by integrating cognitive and affective experiential pathways. Practically, it highlights that enhancing service quality, strengthening place attachment, deepening environmental education, and fostering community participation can systematically elevate visitor satisfaction. This thereby promotes responsible environmental behavior and supports the long-term conservation of cultural heritage through an experience driven approach.
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Xiao, M., Gan, W. (2025) Visitor Satisfaction as the Central Pathway to Responsible Environmental Behavior: A Multidimensional Experience-Based Model in Cultural Heritage Tourism. Journal of Social Development and History, 1(4), 57-68. https://doi.org/10.71052/jsdh/UADM5906