Reinforcing Responsible Tourism through Cultural Involvement: An Empirical Evidence from India

ABSTRACT

The present research sought to uncover how tourists’ cultural involvement (CI) influences responsible behavior (RB) during their travel to a tourist’s destination. Although the importance of involvement has been recognized in responsible tourism literature; CI as a major contributor to RB finds no mention and deserves more attention. To cull deeper insight, the study followed the triangulation method, where both tourist and tour-operators were probed. Grounded theory approach was adopted to theorize the conceptual framework and model validation was carried out with quantitative analysis using structural equation modeling (SEM). Three major antecedents to CI, namely, tourist’s cultural motivation (CM), social influence (SI), and marketing stimuli (MS) were identified. The study also traced the moderating role of mindfulness in arousing RB. Limiting the scope within the geographical boundary of India, the study makes the first attempt in introducing “CI” in tourism research which can be extended further with more cross-cultural studies. The findings will aid future researchers, marketers, and policymakers to associate CI with responsible tourism.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural tourism
• cultural involvement
• responsible behavior
• mindfulness
• grounded theory
• triangulation study