Effect of environmental perceptions on bicycle travelers’ decision-making process: developing an extended model of goal-directed behavior

ABSTRACT

Despite the rapid develop of bicycle tourism, research examining decision-making processed for bike-traveling as a leisure-time choice has been insufficient. Thus, this study was designed to investigate the formation of bike travelers’ decisions by extending the model of goal-directed behavior (MGB). Specifically, this study incorporated two vital constructs in bicycle tourism, namely environmental connectedness and environmental behavior, into the MGB framework. An on-site survey was administered to collect the data with 394 bicycle tourists in bicycle clubs in China. The results of the structural analysis showed that our extended MGB included a satisfactory level of ability in predicting bike-travelers’ intentions and was superior to the original MGB. Our findings also reveal that two incorporated constructs were significant variables influencing bicycle travelers’ decision formation. Moreover, attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and positive anticipated emotion influenced bicycle travelers’ desire, in turn, influenced their behavioral intentions. The implications of this are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Bicycle tourism
• model of goal-directed behavior
• environmental connectedness
• environmental behavior

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.