The impact of perceived restorative destination environments on tourists’ willingness-To-Pay for environmental protection

Tourist payment is one of the effective ways to solve the shortage of environmental protection and development funds in ecotourism areas. Prior research has predominantly examined the factors influencing tourists' Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) for environmental protection from the tourists' own perspective, yet there remains a gap in exploring how destinations can effectively motivate tourists' willingness to contribute financially to environmental conservation efforts. Based on Reasonable Person Model (RPM), with the famous ecotourism site of Hulunbuir Grassland in China as the research site, this study tested the relationship between Perceived destination restorative qualities (PDRQs), Eudaimonic well-being(EWB), Ecotourism destination image(EDI), and WTP for environmental protection, based on questionnaire survey and structural equation model. According to the results, PDRQs did not significantly affect WTP, however, RDRQs made a positive impact on EWB and EDI, Furthermore, EWB and EDI fully mediated the correlation between RDRQs and WTP. These findings confirm that the RPM is applicable to account for the mechanism of RDRQs on WTP for environmental protection, expand its research scope, and help us to comprehend the relationship between human and environment and the inducing mechanism of WTP for environmental protection from the aspect of environmental psychology.