Purpose: This study aims to provide novel insights via a joint investigation of the mediating role of environmental concern and ecotourism experiences. It further explores environmental concern and image as moderators of the association between tourists’ ecotourism experience and revisit intention. Design/methodology/approach: The study used a three-way framework which provided novelty ways of combined moderation-mediation tests on a sample of 474 foreign tourists. Findings: Results show that environmental concern and ecotourism experience mediated the relationships between motivation and revisit intention. The moderating test shows that foreign tourists’ revisit intention and ecotourism experience are highest when environmental concern and image are high. Practical implications: Results of this study suggest that it may be beneficial to relate resources of tourism’s organization to prepare for potential sustainable requirements and/or to assist tourists to develop positive pro-environment attitudes (such as inspire tourists’ sense of social responsibility to improve environmental quality), which could possibly improve the feelings about the natural environment as serving the public good and may raise concern about environmental protection reasonability for tourists. Originality/value: This research is the first comprehensive examination of foreign tourists’ pro-environment attitudes and conducts three-way interaction between tourists’ ecotourism experience, image and environmental concern, which may provide a benchmark for future studies.

This study develops and tests the model of natural-capital-moderated mediation in which emotional value serves as an intervening mechanism in the associations between natural capital and ecotourism. The results of a study of 662 visitors provide support for this model across the different dimensions of natural capital. Somewhat unexpectedly, the mediating effect of the sociocultural and economic dimensions is a positive link between the ecological dimension and ecotourism intentions. Alternatively, the moderating effect of emotional value is found to be contingent on the ecological benefits conferred by the economic benefits. Emotional value fosters a positive moderating effect of economic benefits on ecotourism intentions because it strengthens the positive link between intrinsic motivation and the value perceptions of ecotourism.

This study develops and tests an integrated structural model that explores how natural capital appraises critical tourism attributes, such as place attachment and image and risk assessment, and how these cognitive appraisals impact foreign tourists’ behavioural intention. A total of 631 foreign tourists from 35 countries were examined through a mediation-moderation model analysis. The results of a structural model analysis show that natural capital is an indirect predictor of behavioural intention through the mediators of place attachment and tourism image. In addition, the mediation model is moderated by tourism risk between natural capital and tourism image.