Abstract

Tourist civility is attracting growing attention from practitioners and scholars. However, the research on the effects of knowledge of civility and Taoist values on tourist civilized behavioral intentions (TCI) is incomplete. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), an expanded and integrated framework was developed to explore TCI with data from 358 domestic tourists in China. Structural equation modeling was adopted and mediation and moderation models were tested through the bootstrapping approach. The findings suggested that attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, knowledge, and Taoist values directly affected TCI. It was also found that attitudes positively mediated the connections between subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, knowledge, and Taoist values with TCI; and subjective norms negatively moderated not only the association between knowledge and attitudes but also the mediating effect of attitudes on the link between knowledge and TCI. The results confirmed that the extended TPB exerted greater explanatory power than the original model. This research provides a clearer understanding of TCI by integrating the knowledge-attitude-behavior and value-attitude-behavior models within TPB, which advances the knowledge of the underlying factors that motivate tourists toward civility, and offers a practical perspective to cultivate TCI with targeted strategies.