Engaging with restorative environments in wellness tourism

Drawing from environmental psychology and consumer well-being perspectives, this study leverages the theoretical mechanisms underlying the concept of restorative environments to develop and test a model based on Kaplan and Kaplan’s (1989 Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989). The experience of nature: A psychological perspective. CUP Archive. [Google Scholar]) Attention Restoration Theory framework to examine the restorative potentials of wellness tourism settings. A total of 357 valid questionnaires were collected. The results show that the restorative environment is an important aspect of the wellness experience, contributing to positive emotions and life satisfaction as well as determining an individual’s loyalty and intention to revisit. Multi-group analysis was applied to further examine the moderating effect. This research provided a theoretically and empirically consistent explanation for the theoretical mechanisms of ART underlying the concepts of restorative experience, tourist well-being, and loyalty, the manifestation of which in the wellness tourism context extrapolates the importance of restorative environments for well-being.